


Gollier in the Cakehole

by SmokedSalmon



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, American Irish Hawke, Angst and Humor, Drug Addiction, Eventual Romance, Implied/Referenced Abortion, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Murder, Other, Past Abuse, Recreational Drug Use, Shooting Guns, TransFenris
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-04-02 15:25:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 77,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4064941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokedSalmon/pseuds/SmokedSalmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke is an Irish-American owner of a pub in Lowtown. Fenris is a junkie on the mend with self-destructive tendencies and a penchant for mangling hearts to save his own. Ex-boyfriends with an inability to give each other up, the pair is forced to negotiate both the cycle of poverty and a leather jacket wearing drug liberalization group called CERCLE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Breakfast Stout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do not bind with bandages. If you don't know why, then utilize Google.

Don't ask when I acquired the incessant need to run away, because even if I could tell you, I wouldn't. Childhood's vagueness can lead one to believe in conspiracies due to how, when one's early twenties reach over-ripened fruition, it's as if the skins of memories are flipped inside out and cleaned for consumption. Sometime during the transition period from child to young adult, aspirations and original intent are lost to the definition of 'growing up.' A sudden lethargy, something that carves the torso hollow and summons sandstorms in the frontal lobe, nullifies the juvenile idea of what a 'future' is. But even then, there are constants that continue to resonate through the harshest of seasons. The word to describe my constant could be  _wanderlust_ , but that doesn't capture the nuances of what my running away entails. It's not a daydream, nor is it something I can sum up with a map.

These thoughts seemed prolific while projectile vomiting from the top of one of Wounded Coast's beach cliffs, and for a minute, I considered myself an enduring philosopher. But you consider yourself many important things after consuming a box of Franzia alone on a Friday night. Such as a Romantic, and this drunkenness had morphed me into a temporary one. While _trying_  to savor the sublime that smelled more like dead fish than Yankee Candle's Wild Sea Grass (see: Wild Sea Ass), the attempt to care was snuffed out by a second wave of nausea. I hated the ocean, and with that thought, bile burned my throat until I coughed up acidic pizza remnants that reappeared like smashed coral. I was given the chance to watch vomit travel forty feet toward the ocean for a second time in thirty minutes, and oh, how  _lucky_  I felt.

Puking twice, with thrice closing in, was my cue to walk home and climb into an elevated dorm-issued bed, but my boots kicked pebbles when I turned toward a path that led to the beach. Kirkwall was a tourist trap. There wasn't much else to the city aside from its forgotten underbelly, but every city has one. People beneath the poverty line incapable of making an identity among overpriced resorts had lofted the university town since before I was born, or so I'd been told. After a gap year, I'd moved to Kirkwall in the name of a bachelor's degree and started frequenting (and eventually working) at a local microbrewery. And if there was one place that talked Kirkwall into an early grave, it was the Hanged Man.

The ocean gusted briny wind across my face, a punishment for being out late and refusing to check the notifications on my phone. I dragged across the wet sand and sidestepped in an attempt to avoid the incoming tide, but at some point, my feet still got wet. No one was on the beach at six in the morning. My company was the sound of breaking waves and scattered trash; plastic Coke bottles, forgotten towels, and the unexplainable condom wrapper. There was nothing unusual about a filthy beach when three hotels hovered along the backdrop like titans, and that alone was why I should've never noticed _it_  in the first place.

 _It_  was inconspicuous, left behind on a maroon towel long ago rumpled by a phantom body, and I approached it without reason (an entirely streamline set of actions). After all, for all I knew, it could've been a harlequin romance novel some suburban mother forgot after ignoring her spawns with unwashed fingers and alien heads. But I was certain Danielle Steel didn't bind her books in stitched red leather. This was what led me to lean over and pick up the booklet, appreciating the way its heavy pages drooped in my hand. I turned it from cover to cover before cracking it open, and the handwritten scrawl that wove across its thin golden lines clued me in on what I was holding. This was a personal artifact.

Without reading, I flipped through the pages to see how full the journal was, rapidly exposing an entire era of a person's life to the elements. The sharply slanted penmanship was in a mix of cursive and print, interweaving through chicken scratch and sporadically clean writing that was so concise I wondered how someone's hand could stay steady that long. Holding it seemed invasive, so when I turned to the first page, hunting for a name, a sense of intrusiveness nailed me to the cross.

 

> _I woke up this morning and knew. Maybe it's because it's my body and I've spent the last six fucking years paying too much attention to it, but I knew. I knew while digging out my scoops of coffee grounds, while smoking a cigarette over frying eggs, while taking my morning piss. No doctor had to tell me this would happen again, and who's surprised at this point? Because I'm not. When he told me it had returned with vengeance I looked at him and made a joke about my therapist having missed me anyway and that I'd call him while walking out the door, but I didn't. Being reminded that mental health and physical health are not exclusive to success has never done anything for me._
> 
> _I bought a canister of that powdered green shit and tossed out all my food, but I'm not telling my old lady this time. She'll want me to move in with her. At Christmas, she hugged me and called me her greatest achievement, someone she looked up to. Who beats cancer before he's thirty and gets right back on track? Her son does. Her strong resilient child that keeps the family afloat when she can only do so much. A real man. A college dropout with a shitty job that only started paying above the $10 line a year ago. I'm a man. A dying man. I'm going to die this time, and I have nothing to show for my life aside from a decent credit score and an abortion receipt._

The first entry ended there without a signature. My heart thrummed along my sternum as I flipped through the journal once more, searching for a signature, names, anything to make a connection, but the level of anonymity was clearly intentional. Was it a work of fiction? Had I stumbled across someone's in-progress epistolary novel? A rendition of  _Go Ask Alice_ , _Clarissa_  or  _The Debt to Pleasure_? I couldn't tell, which was why I turned back to the next entry that started on the same page. It was two days later, the second of December nearly three years beforehand, and I shrank down onto the towel to continue reading.

 

> _The doctor told me to do treatment because it's promising (might not even lose my hair), and I'm even stronger than I was before. That's true. I keep thinking about the way he said it after I blew him off. I wasn't taking him seriously enough, and he was pissed. He's a good oncologist. Probably more sympathetic than the rest because he once worked with kiddos. It was something about watching too many infants rot from the inside out that made him switch to adult care. But who could blame him? That job sounds like voluntary hell. Who'd ever have the nerve for that?_
> 
> _Tonight I went out to dinner with my mates and thought about telling them, but the weight of their own lives told me it was better not to. They weren't around for the first round; it's like a myth to them. I don't think they even know. Pretty Boy's been on it again, and that's kind of the focal point right now. It's not in my cards to fuck everything up. Anyway, I haven't even thought this through myself. I don't know what I want, which people never understand. Chemotherapy is fucking back breaking, and I wish it felt more like a choice. You can't just tell your friends or family you've given up. That in itself is the greatest betrayal, and I've never been a very good betrayer._

I shut the journal with a snap and stared straight ahead. My eyes burned from a lack of sleep, and I tucked the book beneath my armpit in temporary defeat before rubbing them until it became masturbatory. Struggling to stand, I wondered if the book belonged to a local, but until I read more, I couldn't be for sure. I reached down, gathered up the towel, and drifted toward the main sidewalk with a suffering drag to my steps, questioning why I always walked so far away from campus when I knew the walk back was infuriating.

The upperclassmen men's dorm on campus was shoved off to the side. Both the creeping morning sun and serenading seagulls lit up Dahlish Hall as I rounded the corner, an unimpressive extension of Kirkwall University. It was an ancient three-story dormitory that hadn't seen an update since 1972, and the clogged sinks and backed up sewage were testament to its low maintenance. Some people found the prison-inspired architecture endearing, maybe symbolic, but it was just an ugly reminder that I was bound to the institution for another two semesters. Students weren't allowed to live off campus, an archaic method of controlling behavior, and it was no wonder half the student population burrowed itself in bars. Where else was I supposed to feel like I had autonomy? I couldn't cook my own meals half the time.

The second-story hall where I lived was slated in constant fluorescent light, but when I unlocked my door, the bedroom was blacked out. The only light I bothered turning on was the bedside one, and in turn, the room was shrouded in a dim greenish glow and moving shadows. I placed the journal on my desk and dropped the towel into my laundry basket before shifting my weight to the side and tugging rings off my fingers, one by one dropping them into a halved Jack Daniel's bottle. I stared down at the custom gift for longer than what was necessary and then pulled my shirt over my head before dropping it onto the floor.

Only when I'd unwrapped the ace bandages from my chest and toed off my boots did I collapse onto my mattress and reach to the turn the light off. Nothing was spinning anymore, but I still didn't bother looking at my phone. The relief of being able to expand my lungs to their fullest capabilities was all that drifted through my head as I fell asleep with my fingers buried in my hair and knees drawn close to my chest. In the afternoon, I would wake up to a damp journal and a thirty-seven furious text messages from Isabela and Co. reminding me that falling of the face of the planet for twenty-four hours was grounds for 'friend divorce.'

* * *

 

 

> _Breakfast at Mom's house could've gone better. If it weren't for the food, then it would've been a loss on my end. She was doing that thing where she burns her children at the stake with poorly veiled guilt tactics. Being widowed and living with my worthless uncle gives her reason raise some hell, but my selfishness gets the better of me when I overthink how she is. The familial duty makes every obligatory dinner and errand less and less appealing, and it's hard to believe there was a point in our lives when I thought my family was the core of everything. I can still remember wanting to maybe elevate us into something better. Just buying a house was the goal once. Now I can't even imagine affording a mortgage or starting a family for myself._

The sun was setting when I woke up to Isabela banging her booted foot against my bedroom door. Somehow, via a method she refused to disclose, she'd acquired a key to the men's dormitory. She and Varric used it too often, and they hid it from me just as well. The banging startled me into rolling out of bed and tugging on a dirty shirt to open the door for her. Not that I wanted to, but it was past the avoidance point. A deep rumbling along with her Jamaican accent let me know Varric was with her, which wasn't surprising. He always was.

"For all we know he walked off one of Wounded Coast's bluffs. We should've checked there first. Hawke said that's where he was last time this happened." Varric was in the middle of opening his mouth to say more, but when I pulled open the door and cut him a quick look, he smiled at me. Varric leaned back as I pushed open the door to let them in. "What a sight for sore eyes. And here we thought we were going to have to hire a search party."

"If he were dead, I would've been shoving sage suppositories up your asshole because he would've been haunting you for the money you owe him," Isabela cut in and gestured at me with a lithe hand. "Varric could start paying that off by buying you dinner – or  _breakfast_  – considering it looks like you just woke up."

She dragged her fingers through her hair, and that was my cue to walk toward the single sink in my room and gaze into the streaked mirror. Varric flipped the light switch, and I wrinkled my nose before dragging my fingers through messy hair and grabbing my toothbrush. The acrid taste of vomit was still resting on the back of my tongue, and I used a generous amount of toothpaste. Varric stepped forward into the room and admired the cut bottle on the desk, picking up one of my silver rings and turning it over in the light. He assumed the value.

"Hawke is meeting us," Varric murmured and dropped the ring.

"He works tonight, doesn't he?" I asked through dripping foam.

Suddenly spitting and returning to vigorous scrubbing, the pause let me know Isabela and Varric were casting implicative looks. My mouth soured again, but no toothbrush could remove that particular taste. Rinsed with my lips wiped, I didn't look at either of them and waited for my question to be answered while drying my mouth. The standoff didn't last long, and Isabela pressed her hip against my doorframe as she watched me grab a set of ace bandages off the floor. Varric naturally looked away when I removed my t-shirt with my back facing him and started to vigorously wrap my chest, but Isabela didn't flinch. She bore her stare into me.

"He took the night off. You can do that when you're Big Man and haven't seen your friends in a while," she said and then whistled at Varric when I was done binding. He'd taken an interest in my Smiths poster up until that point, giving it a mocking smile I knew too well. "Where were you last night? We considered calling him to help us look for you."

"You're threatening me." I checked my weather app and then dug out a grey sweatshirt from my bottom dresser drawer. Varric tossed a black beanie at my head, noticing I was digging through the top drawer for it, and I yanked it on with a quick sweep of my bangs.

"That's not what most would consider a threat," Varric offered, but I didn't take his bait. I wordlessly grabbed my wallet. "But how about you answer the question for Isabela?"

"I went for a walk." That wasn't a lie. "And then I came here to sleep. Now you're here and we're going to eat with Hawke. Don't overanalyze the situation."

"Such an ambiguous creature," Varric said with a grin, gesturing toward the hallway. "Maybe you should cut back on the Louder Than Bombs album."

We left once I slipped on shoes, and I still wasn't properly awake when I stepped outside, reaching into my back pocket for a soft pack of Marlboro Menthols that Isabela produced a lighter for. We each had a car, but there was no point when anything we needed was within walking distance. Convening in the same neighborhood for the past three years had created a comfortable sphere I had no intention of leaving post-graduation. Lowtown was an up and coming, once degraded, neighborhood built on the backs of food stamps and college-aged income. It followed the trend that was poor neighborhoods surrounding high endowment universities, and tourists only dropped by to treat the community like a petting zoo. Feeding businesses from their palms in baseless amusement, I'd watched Hawke bully people directly out of his establishment for ordering a cosmopolitan.

"Hawke just told me he's going to be late," Isabela said while gazing at her phone. "But he said to order appetizers because, by the time he gets here, they'll be hitting the table."

"You know he does this on purpose, right?" Varric pushed open the door to Black Emporium, which was an appropriate name for a back alley restaurant that existed like a myth. "He waits until there's food to show his face. Friendship is an excuse for him to eat."

"This place is loud," I cut in. "It's louder than usual."

"Fenris is hung over," Isabela observed as we grabbed a table in the back, pushing through warm bodies and snaking beneath low overhead lighting. It was a Saturday night and Black Emporium was crowded. For locals, it was a regular hideout, with its cloaking black woodwork and stilted tables. Smoking ordinances held dead weight, and the murky location was known for the odd memorabilia nailed to the walls. When we sat down, Varric reached out to flick a baby doll bobble head with spikes projecting from its skull, and I leaned over to begin reading the splayed open manual about butter sculptures.

"I'm not." I sat down beside Isabela, and Varric assumed his position that would be beside Hawke. A pint was slammed down in front of me without having ordered, the head frothy like cream, and I pulled it closer as Isabela rattled off appetizer orders. Nothing she said sounded good, but that was only because I never ate breakfast. "If I were hung over after sleeping that long, then I'd be concerned."

"Speaking of  _concerned_ , Fenris. Answer your text messages next time?" Varric offered. "Isabela was calling me at 3 AM, and I don't have the heart to tell her to piss off when she sounds like that. You know, I was sleeping like an adult, for once."

Isabela, clearly embarrassed that someone would expose her emotional capabilities, scoffed and sipped her bottled beer. "Don't exaggerate."

"I should've recorded it."

The front door eventually opened with a bang, and when a chorus of yelling ruptured from the bar, followed by an Irish accent's belting return of 'you useless motherfuckers,' we knew who'd walked in. There were few more beloved in Lowtown than Garrett Hawke, and with good reason. He was the definition of self-made; a testament to the fabled bootstrap theory that kept people grinding through their minimum wage jobs. He'd gone from No One to Someone in the handful of years we'd known one another, and with Varric investing alongside him, had created a profitable brewpub that made graduating from KU seem like a waste of my time.

"There he is." Varric gestured toward him, but I kept drinking. "Look at that smarmy bastard. He loves every minute of it, doesn't he?"

"Oh, you know he does," Isabela agreed. "Ego personified right there."

"And, from what you've told me, he's not even compensating." Varric gestured and laughed when the appetizers hit the table. Isabela winked. "What timing."

Hawke appeared with a pint of Guinness in hand, and my mouth turned to ash. He flitted his gaze toward me as he took a seat, and Varric and Isabela didn't hide their second exchange of the night, but Hawke's smile was constant. He noticed. He noticed everything, and so did I. This was why I didn't bother disclosing much to him and arched an eyebrow with a meager, half-hidden smile that meant nothing tangible. This greeting was all I could offer him, but he graciously took it as he rolled back bared biceps. I knew that outfit. He'd come from the gym where he trained. Hawke was an amateur fighter on the side.  _Easy cash_ , he'd once said, but it was more something for Varric, Isabela and I to do on the weekends.

"I can't believe you took the night off," Isabela said while reaching for beef-soaked nachos. "What kind of irresponsible debauchery inspired  _that_?"

"It's been a while since I've let myself get polluted. Figured it was time."

"A while." Varric made a thoughtful expression. "Since when has a week been considered a  _while_? But it's nice to have you back from the dead, Hawke."

Isabela pushed a plate toward me and I picked up one of the squid ink dumplings, forgoing sauce just to get it in my mouth. It scalded my tongue, but I didn't react and instead reached for a chip. Hawke laughed at Isabela with an engaging smile that'd transcended their breakup, and suddenly the hangover sickness blew against me. When I'd moved to Kirkwall they weren't on speaking terms, but that had changed quickly. I'd known them for six months and managed to walk in on them drunkenly pawing at one another three times, but something had happened to make them stop. Varric didn't divulge, and I wasn't about to ask about a personal affair, even if something in my gut told me I knew.

"Fenris," Hawke said my name, and I glanced up at him. "What happened last night? Isabela called me this morning preparing me for your funeral."

He'd asked without obvious accusation, but the accusation was still there.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said dully. "I went for a walk."

"Your walks last twenty-four hours? Admit it. You were mouldy last night."

"He's been awake for thirty minutes," Varric said, lips hovered over the rim of his glass. "Try not to ask any questions with big words."

"That explains it." Hawke reached out, and I tried to lean back when his finger went for the corner of my eye, but it was too late. He scraped the dried mucus free and then flicked it off to the side before ignoring my repulsed expression and proceeding to clean the other. "How are you functioning in school when you never even sleep?"

"To be young again," Isabela murmured. We were virtually the same age. Hawke and Varric were closer to thirty than either of us. "I do that now and wake up feeling like someone plowed me with a freight train."

Varric grinned at the word 'plowed,' and Hawke dismissed him before looking back to me. "Plowing Isabela's box aside, you're almost done with school. Try not to fuck it up now."

He wasn't putting me on the spot intentionally, but because of my preexisting thoughts on the situation, it seemed that way. "Maybe not."

"Since when're you behind?" Varric asked while Hawke frowned and arched an eyebrow. "You're a regular tight ass about school."

"I'm dropping out."

Silence appeared on the moment like a plume of blood, and the way Hawke's stare turned to flint forced a chill to ripple along my ribs like a fleet of spiders, but I matched it with my own. He rolled his jaw and appeared decidedly unimpressed with the contemplation, and he leaned back in his seat. Isabela turned toward me and nearly knocked over her beer bottle with her chest, Varric catching it in the knick of time by flopping halfway across the table. Had I known the response would be traumatizing, then I would've lied. But I saw no point anymore. I'd been apartment hunting for the past month, and I wanted help moving in.

"You'd be fucking thick, Fenris." Hawke pushed the plate between us aside. "Why would you drop out?"

"I have other things I need to do." The urge to get defensive rushed up my throat faster than the vomit from the night before. Maliciousness hit the table with a wet splatter. "Don't look at me like that. I know why I want this."

"You _have_  to get a degree. I didn't give you that rotten job to drop out," he snapped, almost yelled, but when he realized what he'd said and done, he closed his eyes with a scowl. Hawke began rubbing both of his temples and he raised a hand to stop himself from boiling over. "It's  _smart_  to get a degree, especially right now. You've got to be letting on with this."

"I don't  _have_  to do anything." I focused on him. "Are you going to fire me if I drop out? Will that ability to finally vilify me make up for everything else?"

Isabela pushed at my shoulder, and I sharply turned toward her. "You're  _baiting_ , you shit. And don't look at me like that. If you want to fight, then go ahead. I'll churn butter with my foot up your ass."

"I think you're being unreasonable," Varric, forever the mediator, raised both hands. "No one drops out when they have two semesters left. It'd make everything up to this point a waste of time. We all left our sophomore year, but we weren't even finished with gen eds."

"Not to mention we've ended up spending our twenties making up for it." Hawke gripped the end of the table, pushed back, and then exhaled with suddenly sinking shoulders. "You couldn't give me a single reason to justify this. Nothing you pull out of your ass is going to convince me you're doing the right thing. What's another year?"

"Another year is another year of my life spent doing what I don't want to do."

Isabela scoffed. "Everyone has to do things they don't want to."

"Is it because  _he's_ back?" Hawke snapped. Isabela and Varric paused and both reached for their drinks, taking generous swigs. "That's what it is. Isn't it, Fenris? You're talking to him again. After  _everything_ we…"

"My apologies, Hawke," I bit into those words. "Clearly I haven't thoroughly convinced you of my autonomy."

The need to escape was an immediate response to being confronted by Hawke's accusation. Whether or not he was right was none of his or anyone else's business, but that sovereignty had been jerked out from beneath me. I cast a look away from my drink, over two thirds of the way through, and I was enraged by how ashamed he'd made me feel with one unfinished sentence. Hawke knew he shouldn't have said anything, but this was only evident through his sharp, almost betrayed, look that fell on me a moment too late. I finished my drink and pushed back from the table with scraping chair legs. Food hadn't sounded good from the start, and the blister in my mouth was beginning to ache.

"Don't leave," Isabela exhaled. "He's worried. Don't be an asshole."

"Who's going to lose their money to Isabela with me tonight?" Varric shot a look at Hawke who'd resigned himself to the situation and propped his elbows on the table, continuing to drink as if me leaving wasn't happening. He didn't care. Not that I fished for his consideration, but that was the evident truth. "Dammit, Fenris. I'm eating your food."

 

> _There are a lot of things I wish I could tell him. But there's no point. He came in too late, was technically born too late, and there's no reason to overthink the fact that someone I never had will never know the emotional capacity I have for him. I now know there will never be a chance, and she was right. She was always right that it would all end with her. "Through hell's waves or heaven's still waters," she said. Or something like that. We were drunk, and I was too busy eating pussy to understand what exactly she was getting at until now. I'll never tell her that it's not my choice to end with her, because I don't have it in me to be more of a dick to her. I don't want her memory of me to just be that dude who coerced her into an abortion and screamed back._

Isabela was already texting me as I walked out the front door of Black Emporium, and for once, I read her novel-length messages that were mostly creative conglomerations of swear words. She was repeating the same thing; Hawke didn't mean it, come back (insert insulting name here), we were going to the Hanged Man after dinner, Varric is making Hawke eat his ass over this, why can't you two act normal for just an hour? And so on. They were a series of messages that verified my reasons for dropping out, but when I went to pocket my phone, a foreign number appeared on my screen along with a single sentence.

_Where are you?_

My hand gripped tight to my phone, and the pull to respond burned through my fingers' tendons. The idea of telling him was calming. Submission being a release from every expectation I'd built for myself. Distraction had been key to ignoring the chains locked securely around my wrists, and for years it'd worked, but lately not so much. After all, it'd only ever been deemed a distraction and not the sum of all its parts. At this point, it would've been vindictive to respond, which was why I opened the keyboard immediately.

_Near Black Emporium. Do you need me?_

"Usually, you're legging it by now." Hawke's voice carried to me from behind.

I cut a look over my shoulder, seeing that he'd put on a flannel shirt, and then I sped up my pace. "Usually, I don't read Isabela's messages while leaving."

"She can text a novel, that one." He then exhaled. "Quit walking and  _talk_  to me."

"I  _have_  talked to you." The callousness in my words didn't fall deaf on my own ears. "We seem to both be in confrontational moods anyway, and that never makes for good conversation, as you know."

"I'm not asking for you to come back," he said while jogging up to me. He then fell in line with my pace, reaching for my bicep and effectively diffusing my initial want to elbow him out of my space. "I'm asking for you to tell me if you're talking to him."

"And if I am?"

"Then apologize for wasting my time last year."

"I'll apologize for wasting your liquor cabinet."

He let me go when my phone went off, and I checked the messages again. Varric had replaced Isabela, but it was pictures of my food on the table instead of words. One featured Isabela leaned over, posing beside it with her head tilted back and shirt pulled down. My lips twisted to the side, and Hawke gestured in the direction of Black Emporium, but I shook my head, which made him grit his teeth and flex his fingers before smoothly turning away from me. He pushed both sets of fingers through his hair and rubbed his bearded jawline.

"I'm not doing this with you."

His closing sentence made me roll my eyes to the side. On the verge of a sneer, I drifted away from Hawke, and loathed the situation. In the most technical sense of the word, he was my boss, and my most recent schedule was full time. The idea of having to be civil with him while simmering in general distaste was enough to make me consider a two weeks notice, but quitting school and my job within the same two-week span wasn't sensible.

"We'll be at the Hanged Man tonight if you decide to stop eating my head off and making a holy show!" Hawke yelled after me. "Can't do a fucking thing right by you, Fenris!"

Varric once told me Hawke and I would never get along because he drank Guinness and I liked boxed wine. It was one of those rare times when I was prepared to let Varric be right, but three years past the point and without letting him have the satisfaction of knowing. Hawke had turned the corner to go back to dinner, and I realized I had given away my location on a destructive whim, which meant I had to immediately move somewhere else. There was one place I could think of, and I told myself I would expand my horizons once I was officially no longer a student. The Hanged Man was three blocks over.

Merrill was behind the bar, pouring pint after pint and taking money. I stepped behind her and wordlessly started wiping wet glasses with a gray rag. The Hanged Man was the embodiment of beer and regulars who were enthusiastic about the Irish-American owner's pseud-authentic interior design; red leather stools and an oak bar that complimented the oak floors and walls. As a microbrewery, nothing else was available except beer and pub food, and Isabela and Varric's favorite pastime was drawing lewd pictures on the chalkboards Hawke made me write the weekly selection on. That or dictating the music located in the least conventional jukebox I'd ever seen (not that I'd seen many), which played Galway Girl at least four times a night, because Isabela lacked self-control.

"You don't work today do you? Not that I mind. I just didn't see you on the schedule. Most people don't like being where they work on their days off is all, but I guess you're different. Hawke's your friend." Merrill smiled at people walking in, and I continued drying. "I think it's going to be busier than usual tonight. Don't you? It's always so busy, though."

"He'll profit like he always does," I murmured, leaned back against the bar and watching regulars with their decks of cards. Varric would be happy to see me on the losing streak with him in a few hours. We mostly paid Isabela to play with us. "I'm not working. I'm waiting for him to come back with Isabela and Varric."

I dried through four crates of glasses and put them up by the time they arrived. Isabela yelled when she spotted me behind the bar, and Hawke tried not to look self-satisfied, but he was. Before I could pour Varric a drink, Hawke held a finger up at me and mouthed 'wait,' and I went back to what I was doing as he jogged upstairs to his over-business apartment. Isabela licked her upper-lip and grinned, as Varric seemed too casual. My jaw rolled and then stopped mid-roll when I heard that distinct twang of a string being plucked that made me stop and look toward Hawke's apartment door behind the farthest end of the bar.

"I'm leaving," I said as I dropped the glass on the bar.

Isabela jumped over the bar and tried to get me in a headlock. "No! You're not!"

Hawke appeared behind the bar with his acoustic guitar, and I heard the first few chords to Galway Girl, making me look away from him as Varric laughed at me. Everyone in the bar knew the song, because it was the only song they ever played, but it was different when live and from Hawke's mouth. Isabela tightly held me in place, commented on my cologne, and then made me stand there as Hawke smoothly articulated the '- _i-ay-i-ay_ ' with his genuine accent that Isabela yelled along with it. He couldn't have been more of a stereotype right then. Freckles and all, he kept strumming and then paused his singing to talk to me.

"Sing with me, Fenris."

"No," I said, still not looking at him.

"You and your snobby fucking weather," he muttered.

Had he stepped any closer, then he might've bumped the guitar against me, but Hawke still managed to press his forehead against mine. I resisted gritting my teeth in defeat, and betraying myself, genuinely smiled at him. 


	2. Chardonnay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris is terrible at reading between the lines. Someone help him.

And that was the thing about Hawke. You hated him, but didn't do much to get him out of the way. Infuriating, really. His existence was an amalgamation of ideas and exposé that gave him the right to be the epicenter of our world. If life needed a protagonist, a Hellenistic hero, then he was the running lead for  _Argonautica_. You saw it in the way he drifted through the currents of his most recent obstacles, eventually tearing through the pounding weight of water until drowned bodies were nothing but the afterthoughts of a domitable goal. People who can carry weight without splintering off like tragic shipwrecks were one of the few things I exalted.

Another series of esoteric thoughts promoted by wine.

"Have you noticed how he looks like that paper towel mascot?"

Isabela stopped in mid-bite to look at me. "You mean _Brawny_?"

We were sitting at Varric's kitchen island, watching him scrutinize a recipe while picking at the takeout salads and cheap chardonnay I'd bought on a whim. New Order hummed in the background as he muttered ingredients under his breath, and Isabela and I had placed money, with real monetary value, on whether not Varric would reach into his refrigerator and begin cooking. Apparently, from what Hawke had alluded to the night of the Galway Girl incident, he was wooing someone he'd met on a dating website, lying about his ability to cook so thoroughly that the first date with this woman hinged on his ability to concoct a meal.

"You're never going to find yourself a bird if you keep lying," Hawke said when he appeared in the foyer, shutting the front door with his hip. He held a brown paper bag in each arm and shifted them before an orange dropped. "I've done told you that about twenty fucking times now, and when she realizes you can't even microwave a bowl of oatmeal, you're going to have her up to ninety real quick."

"Living in doubt is terminal for the soul," Varric murmured and motioned at Hawke to hurry up without looking away from the recipe. He'd told me what he was cooking, but I couldn't remember the French. "I've got your money. Thanks for it."

"Anything to get a mate laid." Hawke dropped the bags onto the counter and sat beside me. He reached into my salad bowl and stole a piece of chicken, and I made a good-natured stabbing motion at his hand with my fork. "Don't get feisty about your rabbit food. You're coming to my fight tonight once he kicks us out, yeah?"

"Considering you base my hours around your fight schedule it'd be rude otherwise."

Hawke brushed his fingers along his beard. "That's it then, is it? You don't like making some quick cash? You don't have fun watching me?"

"Of course he has fun," Isabela interjected. "Nothing like watching two shirtless men wrestle one another in those jerking homoerotic headlocks."

"You're ruining it for me, Isabela." Hawke tossed a crouton at her. She dodged it. "It's a primal thing. There's nothing sexual about it."

"Primitiveness is inherently sexual," Varric added.

"Survival through our species' innate fight to expand," I continued.

This layering made him uncomfortable. "Stop it."

Isabela mimicked Hawke's trademark aggressive grunt, and I arched an eyebrow at my salad before deciding my opinion was better left to the wayside. She made the noise until her need to laugh overcame her ability to make the implicative sound, and Varric gagged as he opened his fridge. I reached over for my five dollars and Isabela muttered a quick ' _fuck_ ' beneath her breath before smacking the ones against my palm.

 

> _I was handed a folder of listed appointments this morning, and after burning it on the beach and kicking the ashes into the ocean, I had to call the Cancer Center for another copy. The woman wasn't convinced when I told her my dog ate it._
> 
> _All I can do is go to work and think about how even my job isn't permanent. My boss's been swindling the wrong men, and there's literally no chance the place is going to last the year. It fucks not just me over, but a handful of my best friends. At least if I told him I was sick, then he'd keep me on the payroll considering I've done stuck my neck out for the fucking eejit more than he deserves, but with bankruptcy knocking on the backdoor? There's no way._
> 
> _My side hobbies don't make much money either, and once the treatment starts it'll be impossible to do them anyway. Everything stops when you're in treatment, but I don't want to stop. If another year gets taken from me, then it's another setback, and I've had enough of those. The disparity is something no one can understand unless they've been at the mercy of their biology. Fucking cancer cells: no sex, no aspirations, and no distractions. It'll be nothing but the cancer and hesitant poking and prodding from those who find out._
> 
> _I wanted things. I wanted to go to school, get a degree and finish on a high note. I wanted graduate school and a platform that was more than the stereotype of my home country. This isn't why I came here. Things were supposed to be better, but I've been here for six years, and I might as well go back. Rotted economy or not. It'd be a place where I can tell myself I belong. Where women don't walk in just to hear me speak so they can think about me while licking their husband's saggy bollocks._

Varric was left to burn down his house, and with the bottle of chardonnay finished; Isabela and I followed Hawke to the gym three blocks west. Past the stream of outdoor patios where people swarmed like moths to a lamp for smokes, holding plastic cups of vodka and fruit juice with casually bored expressions, it was already late. Late for Lowtown carried multiple meanings, but on Thursday nights it was mostly people clocking out to bet their money on Hawke's infamous stamina.

Aveline, Hawke's coach and fulltime trainer, stood outside the ashcan gym with her hip dropped to the side and phone pressed to her ear. She critically looked Hawke over when he approached, and he lifted his palms in surrender as she gestured toward the metal door with a stabbing finger. Isabela and I were also given accusatory looks, and we both wrinkled our noses at her and stepped inside after Hawke. She was imperial in her Nike tracksuit and statuary posture. Aveline was rumored to have been a retired Olympic medalist, one of the greatest boxers in history, but Hawke claimed he'd never seen trophies or medals in her office to verify this.

"She hates you," Isabela said as we walked past the ticket booth.

"She puts the Fear of God in me." Hawke then paused outside the locker room and checked the time. "But I'm late, so if she reams me, then it's fine. It's not like she's going to drop me when all her money's been riding on me these past couple months."

"You're abusing your likeability," I said, casual enough to make him smile.

"Even you can't deny the charm, Fenris."

We left him there and placed our bets at the humid table where Varric's oldest brother, Bartrand, proudly sat. His short legs were kicked up as he counted sweaty money with a quirked lip, self-satisfied and posturing. The  _Stag at Sharkey's_  environment was punctuated on by the invasive scent of cigars and the black mold imbedded behind every wall. That and the familiar tango of piss and stale beer vapored from all directions, making me forgo breathing through my nose.

"A bunch of loyalists," Bartrand said once we handed over our money.

My mouth dried. "We can't say the same for you."

"Ice cold," Isabela whispered as she reached for me.

Though packed with people, the ring itself was cold. Maybe it was from the wine, but my eyes were suddenly heavy, lowering halfway and blearily engaging the crowd around me as my blood slowed. Isabela disappeared to buy us beer, and I was left to think about song lyrics, specifically the lyrics to Galway Girl. It rang through my head until a sweating cup was thrust against my palm. Isabela had returned a while ago, and I'd been ignoring her the entire time, thinking about Ireland, a place I'd never been, and the unanswered text messages in my phone. He'd tried contacting me throughout the week, but I'd mostly ignored him.

"I never got the chance to ask if you two managed to reconcile your differences."

"Our differences," I started. "You mean about my enrollment."

"If that's what you're calling it."

I leaned over my knees, uncomfortable on the metal chair. She continued her critical gaze, and I my silence, until the announcer's reeling voice briskly cut through the speakers. The fights were usually engaging enough to keep me entertained, but I'd been inflicted by an unsettling retrograde, so all I could do was numbly look ahead.

"You'll be okay," Isabela said and the weight of her hand on my shoulder made me flinch. "Not to sound like Varric, but don't look so damn tragic."

I opened my mouth in a mock laugh but my jaw tilted to the side as I breathed out a wordless noise and rolled my eyes to the left. She watched me finish my drink, and I glanced over at her sharp enough to force her stare off me. We sat in relative silence until I leaned back and made a comment about the crowd. This eased her into making a remark about Hawke's progress and how he was bound to become a pro-fighter if he allowed the opportunity. We were always talking about Hawke, but even when I wanted to straight edge chunks of skin off his chest, it didn't occur to me.

 

> _There's no one more infuriating. I've met a lot of tragic blokes in my day, but this guy makes a man want to eat maggots._

Hawke was a bull, but more of a mechanical bull than the animal itself. He caught the side of his opponent's head and began bludgeoning it with his fist. Isabela had been right about the homoerotic headlocks, and we shared a look as soon as Hawke started to grunt. She repeated the noise, and I made the noise back before taking a sip, causing her to press her fist to her mouth and snort so hard she hiccupped.

The person Hawke was fighting was a no-name amateur I'd never seen before, so when he finally got a hit in on Hawke's face, Isabela was on her feet screaming and shaking her cup of beer because – ' _don't lose my fucking money_!' I, on the other hand, remained seated with my hands hanging between my open legs. Suddenly feeling my phone vibrate, I reached into my back pocket and checked the screen. The text message disappeared like a tease before I could read the entire sentence, and it was fleeting, but there was no denying the 'saw you' I caught before the words entirely disappeared.

"Are you watching this?" Isabela asked and then attempted to snatch up my phone. Panicked, I almost struck her arm in the process. She stopped watching Hawke and then glanced down at the screen. The regret that followed flooded my face, because she parted her lips, the knowingness condemning. The second she was alone with Varric, this would hit the tabletop. Her look disappeared and she tugged me to my feet. "Watch the fight now. Better to see your money circle the drain than pretend."

But Hawke won the fight. Isabela yelled in triumph and pointed at Hawke, whose face had seen better days, over and over again. I rubbed my ear and followed her out of the seats to the men's locker room she saw no error in striding inside. All the while, I couldn't keep myself from glancing at every face we passed, looking for someone familiar. It wasn't until I was leaned back against Hawke's scratched and dented locker did the watchfulness stop. Bugs continued to crawl beneath my skin as Isabela and I waited on Hawke, her stare wandering to every other man who passed.

Hawke strode into the locker room with Aveline trailing behind him.

"Spit it out, Hawke."

Hawke literally spat his mouthpiece into the nearest sink and the expulsion of blood that followed made Aveline reach up, with bare fingers, to inspect the interior of his mouth. She lifted is upper lip, spotted the mashed skin, and shrugged. It wasn't anything serious, but Hawke's typical triumphant cockiness that followed a fight was nowhere to be found. He wiped sweat off his face with a stained towel, and I moved away from the locker when he needed to grab his clothes.

"Nice," Isabela murmured when Hawke began stripping down.

I averted my gaze. "You're disappointed."

Aveline answered before he could. "Of course he is. He was a literal second away from the fight being called. That final hit knocked sense  _out_  of him. Hands down the worst recovery time I've ever seen from you, Hawke. What if you'd lost that winning streak? You'd have let this entire gym down."

Isabela noticed my vague confusion. "You would've noticed if you weren't looking at your phone. Hawke almost dropped the ball."

This explained her overly enthusiastic screaming at the fight's conclusion.

"Right," I murmured. "But he still won."

"It was too close," Aveline said. "Too damn close."

Hawke didn't say anything. He'd heard Isabela call me out for not paying attention to the fight, and I rubbed my temple, wondering why she'd felt the need to throw me under the bus when she knew how Hawke would react when already invigorated by his disappointment. My phone vibrated again, and it was instinct to reach for it, but Isabela subtly grabbed my arm to keep that from happening.

"Go ahead and answer it," Hawke said.

"I don't need to answer it."

Hawke's sideways glance punched a hole through my throat. He shifted the gym bag's strap over his shoulder, and Aveline started to lecture him.

"We should get another beer." Isabela attempted to diffuse the moment, usually a job left to Varric. "He's going to be reamed for a while."

This time I purchased the beer, and we took our seats outside the locker room. Neither of us was in the mood for another fight, having already collected our winnings from Bartrand. The weight of the mostly foreign sensation of guilt caused me to avoid conversation with Isabela. She was kneading her thigh, thinking, and it was how I knew she was going to say something.

"Where will you go if you drop out?"

"I'm looking for a place now."

She sucked her left canine. "You realize I've been looking for a roommate."

"I have no intentions of imposing on you."

"It's not imposing if I'm inviting you." Isabela watched the locker room door. "I have too much space, anyway. You know we'd have fun."

"You're the reason fun is a subjective concept."

"The walls are virtually sound proof." That made me pause in consideration, and she leaned against me a little bit. "Did a light bulb go off just now?"

"I feel as if there's still a condition."

"Not one," she said. "Except helping clean out the spare room."

Hawke strode in front of us, and we didn't look at one another. Isabela grabbed ahold of the situation and began punching at Hawke's chest. He finally broke a smile, and a vague wave of jealousy made me check my phone and read the text message.

_I saw you outside. What are you avoiding?_

_Everything_ , I thought. He knew this, too. He knew exactly what I was doing even though I was simultaneously playing into every want and need he had. A wave of repulsion crippled me, but Isabela reached down to snap in my face for my attention.

The night had passed in an ethereal fog, and this was because I kept waning in and out of the need to be with him someone who wanted to possess me. Again, the thought of texting back was cathartic, and I considered the outcome. In the morning, I would hate him and try to leave, but he would turn me to silk threads and wrap me around his finger until I broke skin. He expelled blood to keep me near; I thought about his wife and children, the house in the Blue Mountains and then the patterns on my skin comprised of fleshy earthworms that'd once spelled out the words ' _I love you_.'

The screen on my phone lit up, and it vibrated in my hand. This time the vibrating continued, signaling a call. Impulse happened, and I answered it without looking at either Isabela or Hawke. She could always engage him.

_I don't think you understand the ramifications of your most recent actions. Already there isn't much room for reconciliation, but if you come back now, then I'll see if I can continue making your life easier. Wouldn't you like that, Fenris? That arrangement we had benefitted you much more than it benefitted me long term. We both know I like you the way you are. Honestly, I'd love to know from where this selfishness came. You were once so good. Content, even. But it's those people you associate with now, isn't it? That bar owner in particular…_

My breathing grew shallow.

_What can they give you that I can't?_

I swallowed down the lump.

_You're better than this._

Shaking hands, trembling arms.

_Come home._

"Fenris," Hawke barked and then knelt down in front of me. I hung up the phone with a quick sway to the side and pocketed it, flickering my gaze to his reproachful gaze. "Fenris, we're going to the Hanged Man. Are you coming with us?"

"Probably not," I said, attempting to find a way out of  _everything_.

Hawke eyed my phone, and his sadness was a hair shy of disappointment. This wasn't his battle, but there he was, immersing himself in the problem. Sometimes I wanted him to, but we didn't share the similar life experiences that allowed us to balance on that enigmatic want. What did he know about fighting for his life? What did he know about feeling imprisoned in his own body? An involuntary meat sack that dictated my entire place in the world: my body, my home, my prison. Sometimes, when I looked at him, the envy was palatable and my tongue went wet, everything went wet. He would never understand how much I wanted to exist on his level.

"Did you want to go for a walk instead?"

"A walk?" I glanced at Isabela who'd taken a sudden, perplexing hint and waved goodbye to me over Hawke's shoulder. "Why a walk?"

"Because I'm pissed off and need to diffuse, and you look like God just tried to Dutch oven you."

"That was a disgusting metaphor."

"I'm not here to charm you."

"And that would be a first, wouldn't it?"

His invitation was enough to make me stand, and Isabela was gone by the time we drifted out of the gym's front door and onto the sidewalk. Side-by-side, our pace managed to match up even though or bodies were distinctly different in all ways fathomable. What I lacked in his general enormousness, I made up with lankiness.

"If you go wherever I want to go, then I'll buy your shite Franzia."

"Maybe if you drank it, then you'd learn to like it."

"Not on your life," he said and started walking backward in front of me, smiling. He shoved his hands into his back pockets and leaned forward, his hair catching the briny wind. "But make that deal with me. I know you're a man of your word."

"How long is this excursion going to last?"

"Does it matter?" He checked the time on his invisible watch. "The sun's setting. Looks to be about lunch time for you."

"Eat me," I said and bit my tongue to keep from showing amusement. "You have a deal then. But you're buying it _now_."

"Fenris, find me someone more high maintenance than you."

"It'll never happen in your lifetime."

We rerouted to the nearest liquor store, and when we walked inside, I noticed the bruising along Hawke's temple had darkened. He wasn't particularly swollen, but it still looked painful enough to make me grimace. The rows of boxed wine were hidden at the very end of the bottled wine aisle, and I reached for the chardonnay but then paused, changing my mind at the last second. Hawke looked away, injured.

"That isn't even real sangria."

"Real sangria takes time neither of us have right now."

Hawke carried the box for me, setting it on the countertop with a disenchanted thud before reaching over and tossing a package of plastic cups, several mini bottles of Fireball and then a completely unnecessary packet of apple pie gum alongside it. He asked for the menthols we both smoked and then tugged out his wallet, unveiling a booklet of cash he thumbed through with a lopsided frown.

"You're not a cheap date," he murmured.

"If Franzia isn't a cheap date, then I could've ordered water from McDonalds."

"I was joking," he said and then finally chuckled beneath his breath as he handed over the money. "Water from McDonalds – I'd at least get you a Happy Meal."

"Garrett Hawke, The Big Spender." I lugged the box off the countertop. "You never said where we're going."

"You're not really one for surprises, are you?" He opened the door for me, holding it until I was on the sidewalk and comfortably hugging the wine to my chest. "It's four blocks away. I think you can handle five minutes of suspense."

Hawke and I continued onward, past the glowing bars and toward what became the cushy neighborhood I recognized as the very start of Hightown. Kirkwall did that thing where, one minute you're certain you're in a low-income neighborhood, and then you take a step over only to suddenly find yourself in the land of manageable student debt. A middle class hardly existed in Kirkwall. It was a city where you either ate caviar or served caviar. Hawke fought this tooth and nail, but he still served drinks.

All I could observe was how we were in an unapologetically Victorian hellhole. The block in particular had been stylized as picturesque, but casually so. I wasn't new to the expensive gingerbread-inspired wraparound porches, clapboard siding and decorative pastel trim. In particular, this neighborhood had a preference for gated front sidewalks that concealed impossibly lush flowerbeds and classic streetlamps.

The summer sun had only just finished setting, and an ominous chiaroscuro haunted every picket fence and trashcan. Hawke paused in front of a gate, and I smacked against his back with a quiet thud. He laughed and caught my shoulders before redirecting me to face a particular house with a hard spin. Though it was almost too dark to see, the green structure was foreboding. Its oversized door stood like an open mouth, gaping with stained glassed windows accenting its sides, and I clawed my stare down both the exterior's single pointed tower and rustling trees.

"An attractive home," I said. "But why're we stopping here?"

"Because it's for sale."

"Why is that relevant to us?"

Hawke nudged the gate with his hip, and a threatening creak followed. Unmoved by potential trouble, he headed down the cobblestone sidewalk, past the overgrown flowerbeds and then jogged up a case of wooden steps. I remained off the property and watched him, unimpressed with the trespassing, but curious, nonetheless. He made a come hither gesture I'd only seen him direct toward me once before, and I parted my lips in annoyance.

"It worked last time."

"Last time neither one of us was sober."

He extracted a credit card, raised it like a trophy and shoved it into the doorjamb. "No one's bought her yet, because she's a piece of shit."

"And that's why you're fond of it."

"I'm sick of the Hanged Man, and I'm sick of seeing how much vomit you can pour into the ocean. When you puke, do it behind the rose bushes here."

"I like how we haven't started drinking yet, and you're assuming I'll vomit."

"I know thee well."

Hawke jerked his hand once more, and the door swung open. This prompted me to join him on the porch, and we entered the gloomy home with shuffling feet.

"Is the electricity turned on?"

"For climate control," Hawke began before flipping a switch, "and  _us_."

The foyer was a high-ceiling dust bowl, clearly neglected with water stains running through the antiquated periwinkle wallpaper, and not a forgotten decoration in sight. Across the abysmal room stood a narrow wooden staircase, nestled beside a door that led into a formal dining room, and then to the right remained an arching doorway. It opened up to a living room where draped pieces of furniture stood like abandoned ghosts, aching for a family to preoccupy their time, redefine their relevancy.

Hawke guided me into the living room with a comfortable pace, and one might've thought he was the owner. From the center of the living room, I was given a better view of the sprawling kitchen with its bay windows, but my eyes locked in on the shut and abandoned bookshelf located opposite to the kitchen's door. It was directly beside another floor to ceiling stained glass window that needed an entire bottle of Windex, but the vicinity was striking, impossible to imagine myself in.

"You're being quiet," Hawke observed.

"I'm appreciating the atmosphere," I said, dropping the wine onto a covered chaise lounge. I pushed back the sheet before taking a seat. "And is this it?"

Hawke scoffed at me and began opening the plastic cups. This was my cue to jerk back the sheet the rest of the way so that he'd also have somewhere to sit.

"What do you want out of life, Fenris?" Hawke asked.

Those words made me stop while in the midst of opening the wine, but after shaking off the thought, I continued. "I could think of a better question for someone who's about to drop out of university during his senior year."

He thrust the cup into my hand and waited for me to pour my first round of sangria. When I had it, he sat down beside me and twisted the red cap off one of his whiskey bottles. He was wearing a thoughtful face, and it occurred to me we'd gone there for a reason. Whatever that was, it was clearly escaping us both. I wasn't sure who was more lost, which was somewhat of a relief considering it was usually me.

"When you know, then will you tell me?"

"I suppose I will. I have a tendency to tell you things first."

"For an inexplicable reason, of course." Hawke gave me a knowing smile and suddenly killed the bottle of Fireball. I watched his thumb run along the edge of the top when he was done, and he leaned back to look into the kitchen. "Have I ever told you what I want?"

"Somehow, you haven't." I paused and then considered why he hadn't. "You were content with Isabela for so long. I assumed plenty. We all did."

"In her heart-of-hearts she never wanted to settle down with me," he said, and picked at the edge of the Franzia box with a furrowed brow. "And it's becoming clear I also didn't. Two people can bring a lot to the same table, but there was something about her divorce that didn't sit well with what we _said_ we wanted. She couldn't move past it, and she didn't want to, I think." Hawke took the cup out of my hand and attempted a sip, but one taste made him look at me, slighted. "Sometimes we let the things that happen to us become central parts of our identity."

"It's an inevitability. Life experiences are the monopolism of identity."

"To an extent," Hawke combated and then handed back my cup. He flicked his gaze toward my face, and his stare held mine. "I want a house like this."

"An admirable goal." I slumped down and hung over my knees. "Is the apartment over the Hanged Man becoming too small for you and the dog?"

"There isn't a lot of room to grow there." He traced the silken embroidery along the couch, and I watched his hand, remembering a time he'd done something similar. My back rippled at the thought. "I'm to a point where I'm ready to have more."

"More," I repeated, the half-question made clear.

"More," he said, and I realized whatever he'd wanted to say was gone.

 

> _There are a lot of questions you have to ask yourself at twenty-five. Are you where you thought you'd be five years ago, and even if you're not, would that twenty-year-old you be proud? Standing in the alley behind work during break today, I decided I wasn't where I thought I'd be, and no, this isn't good enough. Somewhere, everything got lost in the mundaneness of getting older. Boredom? Bills? I don't know. But whatever happened isn't worth the fight I put up in college. The malcontent is gross, consuming. Even if I don't make it through these next few years, I'm going out doing something that survives my funeral._

The couch lost its sheet entirely, and I scooted to give Hawke more space. Having finished off his final bottle of whiskey, he saw my position as a familiar landing strip and maneuvered himself between my knees. My exasperation was apparent in how I exhaled, but when his cheek touched my chest, I reached up and dragged my fingers along his forehead. His weight caused me to lean against the highest end of the chaise's asymmetrical back, and I tilted my head onto its elevated arm. It was then I noticed the tracery ceiling from which a dusty chandelier stagnantly hung.

"Do you think Varric will ever get over Bianca?" Hawke asked, his voice throaty enough to reverberate through my chest.

"That woman from the Renaissance Fair? Not until he wants to."

"Maybe I should start making online dating accounts," he said wistfully, extending his legs for a moment and groaning when his knees popped. "Varric knows the algorithm for the perfect dating profile. He can weave a story from nothing."

"Would that fill the crippling void Isabela left inside you?" I was attempting to act as sober as possible. This, in turn, caused me to act even less sober than I would have if I hadn't tried. "Was she your Bianca, minus the lace backing and full skirt? When we met you two were matrimonial, if I recall correctly."

"She's not my Bianca." He paused and furrowed his brows, and he pressed his ear against my sternum even harder. "Can you breathe like this?"

"I can breathe fine, but you're ineffectively deflecting."

Hawke's amber eyes stared at the fireplace, and I couldn't tell if he was searching the marbled design for a story or evoking his own. "You always think the person you love in that moment is the one, which is fine. Otherwise, people become disposable affection, and that's not healthy when you're making promises. That's what happened between Isabela and me, and when we got into a situation where we'd have to keep our promises, what we'd created shattered."

"I'm afraid I've never had anyone arouse that feeling in me."

"Don't worry, Fenris. I know exactly what feelings we can arouse in you."

I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes and quietly laughed. "Some people walk into things. I, unfortunately, choreograph an entire dance for them."

"And you do it so beautifully."

We grew quiet, and my mind wandered places I'd blocked for many reasons. His eyes fluttered shut, and it wasn't long before his breathing grew deep and rhythmic. Forcing myself to savor the rare but pleasant sound before it would inevitably dissolve into snoring and drool, a wave of indecisiveness crashed over me, forcing me into the undertow. The inexplicable need to jerk Hawke up by the back of his head and toss him off me was followed by the condemning want to wake up the next morning in the same position, my legs tiredly wrapped around his hips.

My phone rang, and with a final breath, I started to drown.


	3. Screwdriver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is vaguely fenders critical, but I genuinely like Anders as a character in this story. Keep in mind this is from Fenris' perspective and fictitious opinions are not a reflection of my views on characters, sociopolitical issues, etc. I'm generally a very neutral person.

"This reminds me of the time my cousin and his friends petitioned the middle school to play Metallica at their dance."

"I thought only the United States was known for being embarrassing in eighth grade."

"No, love. It's a universal tragedy."

This might come as a shock, but I don't hate many things. What makes me want to lie back in a tub and take a deep breath is rarely petty, but as often as I wish I wasn't, I'm still human with human aggravations that can be trivial at face value. With that being said, it should be known what Hawke and I were staring at from behind the bar was not petty, but a legitimized exasperation on my part. Unfortunately, Hawke didn't have the capacity to become as frustrated as I did; something purely derivative of our differentiating backgrounds. But even with that in mind, his inability to hate what I hated made my blood pressure spike. Instead of hating, he jested. This was only so charming after three years of the same mechanism.

"Anders means well," Hawke promised, biting into his club sandwich.

"You only think that because he's your  _dealer_."

"Dealer and best friend second only to Varric," he corrected and handed me a fry before reaching for his napkin. He dragged the napkin along his bottom lip, managing to expertly clean his beard. "I'm not looking to argue with you. But he's virtually harmless."

"If only you knew how many times I've heard that."

Hawke moved the rest of his fries toward me as a peace offering, but I ignored them and crouched down to dig a water bottle out of the fridge. He reached for one, I handed it to him, and then when I stood up, I was met with raucous laughter. Offended by any happiness that might derive from the table I was leering at, I started stuffing fries into my mouth, completely disregarding Hawke and my source of irritation.

The Hanged Man was a microbrewery hinged on its Irish reputation. Hawke was the heartbeat, the establishment's main attraction, but his lawless personality and magnetism lured in some of the least desirable extensions of Lowtown. Such as Anders, a leather clad owner of the  _Anarchist Cookbook_  who breezed in and out of the pub's front door with a knowing air so infuriating I wanted to reorganize his ribs. Currently, he was seated at a back table with relaxed shoulders, his distinct 'FUCK THE CHANTRY' patchwork along the back of his studded jacket visible to all. Hawke had once told me he was a medical school dropout, something Anders believed made him a martyr in the siege of academia.

"Pray tell what you're getting from him tonight." I saw a customer at the end of the bar raise a finger, and I drifted away from Hawke. Waiting for his answer while pouring a beer, a strangely soothing process, I righted the cup and turned to him after he decided not to be prompt. The glass hit the table with a hard smack, and the customer jumped. "Or is this another circle I'm excluded from?"

He smiled at me. "The same thing I did last Friday."

"The day you lose control is the day I quit."

"Fortunately for us both, I'm all about quality control."

Anders stood up, and I looked to Hawke who wasn't paying attention. It was a silent arrangement that Hawke served Anders, and we never made an exchange. The phone rang, and Hawke reached for it before noticing Anders approach the bar. He cut me an exasperated, but still apologetic, look when Anders stepped in front of me. Talking low into the receiver, Hawke carefully watched the both of us. His desperately flitting gaze told me the multitasking was overwhelming him. That or I just implemented panic.

"Guinness," Anders said coolly. "Looking sprightly there, Fenris."

My mouth soured. "A typicality, I assure you."

"Must be so." Anders ran his hand along his gingery stubble that was an unfortunate attempt at facial hair. "Are you still collecting benefits from Hawke, then?"

Every muscle in my arm tensed as I poured his Guinness. "I've always wondered why you consistently find novelty in my payroll. It doesn't seem to directly impact you, does it?"

"More than you care to recognize," Anders mumbled. I pushed the beer toward him, and he took it, but didn't leave. "You're good at eliciting a particular taste, which makes things complicated on my end. You're difficult to one up."

"We have some arsenic in the back. You seem to be having one of  _those_  nights."

We stared one another down. Anders took his glass and returned to the table, and I whipped toward Hawke too kinetically. He raised a hand in either defense or to calm me, and I swallowed the bitters distilling on my tongue, dropping my tense shoulders.

"What'd he say to you?" Hawke asked, appearing several minutes later. "You're looking a little feistier than usual."

"It was the usual impertinence."

" _Impertinence_ ," he repeated. "How refined."

"When are you going to tell CERCLE they can't have their meetings here?" I asked. He would've deflected Anders' presence otherwise. "One wrong move on their end and  _you'll_ be under the federal government's thumb. They'll shut  _you_  down."

"They're not in a meeting." Hawke grabbed my shoulder and I wrinkled my nose as I pulled away. "They're drinking beer in a bar like every other blue collar on this end of town. You act like they're using this place to push. Stop wadding up on me."

"Don't tell me what to do."

CERCLE, an invasive drug liberalization group, was the model for 'extremist.' Their plight with the war on drugs was based on the idea that drugs should be screened and not controlled. People were going to use them anyway, and drugs might as well be pure and 'safe.' This, much like communism, sounded better on paper and was purely junkie logic. I knew personally that furthering the accessibility to drugs would only make manipulation and human trafficking that much easier. When I attempted to explain this to Hawke and Anders, they brushed me aside. Corporate sources like  _60 Minutes_  were created to scare the masses, they said. I didn't have enough experience in their world to understand, they said.

Truthfully, it was my own fault I didn't feel the necessity to divulge my personal history to prove them wrong. But I didn't owe either of them that part of me just to prove a point.

"You help Anders," I said and hoped that would end the discussion.

"What I've done with Anders  _and_  Varric is the reason you have a paycheck." Hawke's temper flooded his voice. "You don't know what I've done to insure your security here."

I met that head on by turning toward him. "How thankless of me. How would you like me to return the favor? I clearly owe you so much – "

Anders slammed his fists on the table with a clatter, heatedly talking beneath his breath to the sewer dwellers surrounding him with cultish admiration. Hawke cut me a hard look and walked toward the gathering, a hand combing through his hair.

"They're hunting us," Anders muttered. "We're the foxes, and they're the dogs. Soon they'll be waiting outside the burrows."

This was what Hawke meant when he mentioned the middle school dance. Anders' invigorated passion for his injudicious cause embarrassed me, which was ironic considering my penchant for Depeche Mode and solitary walks at three in the morning. We had a partiality for the melodrama, but the difference was how only one of us could own up to it. Did I wear a gratuitous amount of black and own The Damned's original vinyl? Yes. But the only thing I vehemently defended was my emotional state and reservations. Anders dressed like he'd modeled himself after Sid Vicious' abortion with fortified reason.

It was supposed to be an archaic 'fuck you.' But he was long past the boiling point of 1977 (he was born in '89), and when I looked at him, all I saw were the mounting dollar signs. He put more money into the capitalism he hated to look like he didn't give a shit than someone who genuinely didn't give a shit. Anders was a special kind of tragedy; a product of a dead era. I looked at him and saw the perpetuation of vapidity that changed nothing aside from his hair color and self-righteousness, inspired by his decision to give out clean syringes with each deal.

"The Chantry isn't going to give up even if we grow quiet. That's not the point," Anders continued, and my top lip curled. "We've all done our time when we had the least to say."

"Then  _what_  are you going to do?" I asked, projecting.

Anders looked over his shoulder. "Exactly what your sort does to  _us_."

"I just offer you arsenic," I mused, "but I don't  _make_ you take it."

"You'd revel in seeing all of us rot in prison."

"If that were true, then I would've made quite the damning phone call years ago." I leaned back and rubbed a streak off the bar. "Are you avoiding the question?"

Anders turned away from me, and Hawke looked down at him, speculating. We then exchanged looks, and he winked, but with no smile. Whether or not that was intended to run me off didn't matter, because I tuned them out for the sake of my blood pressure.

Varric pushed through the front door and stopped when he saw Anders. From what I'd gathered, Varric had introduced Hawke and Anders, and to this day regretted it. There was something about their relationship that bit his ass as hard as it did mine, but we could never articulate what exactly it was. Varric was Anders' friend, though. The balance there was one of the strangest I'd seen. Varric never held someone under suspicion without good reason.

"Since when does CERCLE meet here?" Varric dropped onto a stool in front of me. I set his usual drink down and he handed off his card to open a tab. "Hawke and I talked about this sympathizer garbage giving the business an unwanted bias just last night. Political agendas in Lowtown businesses are worse than herpes. We want cash, not alienation."

"I'm but a lowly bartender." I leaned over so that we could talk without being overheard. "I mentioned it and got the hair flip."

Varric grinned. "The hair flip?"

I laughed beneath my breath. "You know what I mean."

"You've got the best hand out of all of us," he murmured when Hawke started walking toward the bar. "If you wanted to run this place, then all you'd have to do is raise. You two have been evading sensibility for too long now. Lovebirds build nests, you know."

We arched an eyebrow at one another, and I leaned back when Hawke slumped down beside Varric as if expecting me to disclose. Recalling we weren't on good terms, I walked away from the pair so that I could fulfill my duty as that lowly bartender. What Varric said lingered with me, though. Too bad conniving wasn't in my nature. This was one of those times when it would've been beneficial to be trash, not just for myself, but also the longevity of the Hanged Man. Anders was going to be the ruin of the place, and then we'd all be out of a job.

> _Pretty Boy walked in on me vomiting during the end of my shift. He took my beanie and pushed back my hair as if it'd get in the way. It was a weird gesture followed by a thoughtful one where he brought me a clean rag from the back. I wanted to thank him better, but I was too busy being equal parts humiliated and disgusted. Best was when he asked if I was withdrawing, and when I asked why he'd think that, he said it was because he used to do junk and junkies got the shakes like I do. Felt badly for laughing at him right there._
> 
> _I called the low baby on his shit, said he was too young to be done and over with it, and he asked me if I thought he was really done and over with it. Touché, the little shit. He's always got a comeback for whatever I say to him. My old lady loves him, though. She told me she'd leave me for him if she had the chance. Something like the only reason she hadn't yet was because his ass is a tragedy. Good fucking riddance. I'm too tired to even get it up for her right now. Not that she's around enough to care. She's always importing and exporting on the docks. Fish out of water, my love._
> 
> I dropped my classes on a standard, Monday morning. Kirkwall University's overly endowed campus was swarming with midterm-deadened students, crunching through one of the first frosts of the season with a cloud of suicidal ideations. From the looks of it, I was walking up the cobblestone path to the registrars' office to confirm my spring semester's schedule. Had things been different, then in less than eight months, I would've been a certified Medievalist. I'd spent years on my English major and Medieval and Renaissance Studies minor, and it'd been a waste of time. I tried to tell myself there were worse things, but I wasn't convincing.

"You're dropping all of them?" A woman, short and squatty, asked while sipping from her cat mug. "With a semester and a half to go? Is there an emergency?"

The travesty of private university was that people were paid to care and notice the details. My mouth dried, and I took a seat across from her in an ugly mustard chair. It tried to eat me, and I shifted as quickly as possible to keep from being murdered.

"Is there paperwork I need to sign?"

She opened a tab on her computer and asked for my name and student number. Pulling up my records, she scanned them several times, and then after a long pause, pushed her keyboard to the side. The woman placed her folded arms down in front of her and leaned forward. I focused on the coffee mug, its bulbous cartoon eyes leering at me as she cleared her throat. I couldn't place her name. I'd been on campus for three years and didn't know the name of the registrar.

"Fenris, you're going to graduate with Honors. You're an Honors Student." She turned the computer screen toward me and tried to make me look at my GPA, but when my nose crinkled, she stopped. "Is it a financial situation? You're cleared for both semesters."

"It's a personal decision."

"You need to finish this degree."

"I don't need to do anything."

"Listen," she gestured at me, raising her hand up and down. "You seem like the introspective type. I understand that's your generation's  _thing_ , but I promise you the post-structural approach to education reform is _not_ going to happen in the formative years of your career. You  _need_  this degree to do anything productive later in life."

"Paperwork," I repeated.

She shook her head and printed off the four sheets that needed my signature. I had forty-eight hours to vacate my dorm. This was enough time for me to hand Isabela six months worth of rent and begin dragging boxes out of the spare room. It was bigger than my current single-person dorm, and the thought of having a kitchen almost deadened me to the fact I was bound to be a meager-wage bartender until the disintegration of time.

Even though it was cold, Isabela was lying out on her back porch, topless, when I walked into her apartment. It was technically one of the nicer duplexes in Lowtown with its marble countertops and matching stainless steel appliances. As I traipsed through her living room, on toward the thrown open backdoor, her impulse response was to raise both arms and make hand-horns.

"How'd it go?" She asked, dropping her hands and lifting her Ray-Bans.

"Did you know the post-structural approach to education reform wouldn't happen in the formative years of my career?"

Isabela rolled over onto her side. She propped her cheek up on a palm and patted the ground beside her. "Come here, Pretty Boy." I sat down and she smiled at me, looking me over with shrewd thoughtfulness. "As long as you're happy with this decision, then you'll be fine."

"There isn't much choice."

She raised a finger. "There's  _always_  a choice."

We stared at one another for a minute. "It's too cold to have your tits out."

"No such thing."

"We have forty-eight hours to move me," I said and pulled out my phone to start playing Mahjongg. "I haven't started packing."

"Call Hawke and have him help you." She leaned forward to assist with my game. I didn't answer for a couple matches. Isabela prodded me. "He's off today."

"He's not going to help me."

"If you'd paid closer attention in your Interpersonal Communications course, then I bet you two wouldn't have half the problems you do."

"I made an A in Communications."

"Then act like it." She suddenly stood up and tugged a hoodie on over her chest. I beat my round and had her tug me up, then shifted my weight onto a single foot. Isabela strode through the living room and into the kitchen. "Want to hear something scandalous?"

I sat down at the breakfast bar. "Assuming it's about someone I know."

"Hawke's going to a CERCLE meeting tonight."

" _Who_  told you  _that_?"

"Hawke himself." Isabela reached into the fridge for orange juice and grabbed two glasses. She inspected my face and crouched down to pull the Grey Goose out from beneath the sink. Her dramatic pause lasted until she finished making my screwdriver. "Want to go?"

"I'm not going to want anything to do with CERCLE after moving."

"You said forty-eight hours," Isabela murmured and handed me the drink.

She had me there. "Always the instigator, Isabela."

"I am a bad influence, Fenris.  _Hardly_  an instigator."

We cleaned out the upstairs guest bedroom while we waited for the sun to set. It was a cesspit of workout equipment, clothes with the tags still attached and memorabilia from when she'd dated Hawke – most of which felt like relics from an ancient era. What was most impressive was her jewelry collection, all real, haphazardly tossed into Rubbermaid tubs. Isabela was luxurious for Lowtown, but constantly reminded us she'd never aspire for Hightown like Hawke. She was comfortable around people from her own class, and the idea that people from different classes couldn't comfortably mingle was something we both agreed on.

Throughout the duration of sorting Isabela's things, my phone incessantly buzzed. I didn't need an oracle to know who it was. When my nerve fissured, I reached into my back pocket and answered. Silence came over both Isabela and I as nothing but white noise buzzed through the speaker. I wondered if the registrar had called  _him_. The nothingness crackled for several more seconds before he finally spoke. One intake of air, and I knew.

" _Is this what they call a cry for help?"_

My thumb ghosted over the red button.

"Short conversation?" Isabela asked, being polite but transparent.

I didn't respond for several seconds. "The registrar called him."

She stopped. "Why would the registrar call  _him_?"

The silence reconvened until something inside her head clicked. Her eyes widened and she rolled his glossed lips together before returning to gathering armfuls of clothes. A sudden understanding unfolded between us, and her urgency was quiet, but ruffled. That pity was on the tip of her tongue, but she refrained from mentioning my lack of a response.

"There's a nice knife in here somewhere. When you find it? Hand it to me. I've got a scrotum that's in need of filleting."

> _The sun's not up yet, but I've got this kid sleeping on my couch. Even in his sleep he looks perpetually angry. His nose is scrunched so tight right now it might fall off, and I caught him scratching his skin until I was prepared to watch him tear himself apart. He's the kind that'd do that, you know? He's always flipping his ribcage inside out. Makes a person wonder what could make someone so angry. I think I might have an idea, though. Nothing's really ever all that fair._
> 
> _He's covered in scars from head to toe. It's supposed to be decorative – scarification – but there's no way someone can do that without a bit of twisted hatred in mind._

Darktown, the underground of Lowtown, was where CERCLE assembled. Pinpointing exactly where they'd be wasn't an easy task because Darktown wasn't a literal town. It was a network of alleyways and backdoors that peppered wet, brick-like pathways to an ominous otherworld. It took Lowtown's shop fronts and spun them like  _Through the Looking-Glass_ , and the atmospheric tension it created between people reminded me of a less refined version of my birth city. The only difference between the two was not everyone in Darktown owned a Maserati.

Isabela and I stood side-by-side on the edge of an alley. I was holding a cup of coffee to purge my midday hangover because one screwdriver had turned into four, a short nap and then one and a half burrito bowls. Isabela was still wearing sunglasses, looking ridiculous, and I was counting the chomping of her gum. She was in my black jean vest, and I was sporting her leggings. The thought of how much more prevalent this would become upon living together wasn't lost on me. Thankfully, she couldn't fit into my hooded sweatshirts. Sharing was hardly one of my strong points. In fact, it wasn't a point at all.

"They're usually in the back of the Black Emporium," I muttered.

"How do you know?"

"Because people tend to do this thing where they forget I'm there and keep talking."

Isabela considered this and stepped forward. "But to get into the back of the Black Emporium we have to go through the front since the front door is technically the back door. Nothing's ever easy, is it?"

"Varric once said something about easy never being good story material."

"Since when have you started listening to Varric?" she asked.

My mouth drew to the side.

The bar was busy when we entered. Isabela and I glanced at one another. We paused to consider if we needed a plan or not, and then strode through the crowd, dipped behind the bar and entered the kitchen. Busy establishments were hardly on alert, and we took advantage of this unspoken trust as we turned down a hallway past the kitchen. Cautiously walking, we crept through the shamelessly cockroach littered hallway that made my fingers tense.

"We know where the crunch on those burgers comes from," I said.

Isabela looked at me in disdain.

The true reason we hadn't devised some kind of plan was because it was too early for anyone to actually be there for the meeting. We'd given ourselves an hour to make a quick judgment about the area, and if we found stalking plausible, then it was fair game.

"This looks conspicuous," I said, suddenly stopping.

We paused outside of an empty storage room where weary boxes were stacked and metals chairs and tables sat arranged in a circle. A swinging, bare light bulb hung overhead. On the farthest table laid a manila folder labeled 'OBJECTIVE' and beside it sat a cup of black coffee. I stepped inside and reached for the folder, opening it without a second thought. Flipping through spreadsheets and blueprints with hastily scrawled notes in the margins, the meticulous nature of the folder caused me to lick between my teeth and upper lip.

"Did you know they were this organized?" Isabela asked.

I continued thumbing through the packet of information. At the very back of the folder was a list of ingredients. Isabela leaned closer, almost knocking over the cup of coffee. I reached down to stop the sloshing but then hissed from the unexpected burn that followed. Instead of considering the burn, I considered the fact it was still  _hot_.

"Hot coffee," I murmured. I dropped the folder and dragged her toward a broom closet.

"Coffee is typically hot," she said. Isabela suddenly stopped. "Because someone just poured it. Because someone was just in here."

"And your elusive deduction skills _finally_ make their appearance."

I shoved her into the closet and then stepped inside directly after her. Turning around, my back smacked against her chest and she wrapped her arms around my waist to keep me still. The vented metal door shut in front of us. Vapors from improperly closed bottles of cleaner threatened to suffocate me, but hiding in the gaseous closet had been smart. Voices echoed from the hallway, and I recognized the two laughs as Anders and Hawke's. Isabela made kissing noises in my ear, and I exhaled, _hard_.

"It only took two years of convincing," Anders said as he stepped into the room.

Hawke, the traitor, sat down at the end of a table, and my throat tightened when Anders glanced down at his spilled coffee and picked up the mug. Isabela tightened her grip on my hips, and normally I would've shoved her off, but right then I couldn't blame her. She only loosened her grip when Anders finished inspecting and sipped from the mug. It was then I realized a missed opportunity. I could've spat in it.

"So," Hawke began, "what exactly is _this_?"

"An organized group of concerned citizens taking time out of their day to promote a good cause," Anders replied and was met with laughter.

Hawke raised an eyebrow, still smiling. "Don't quote the brochure at me."

Anders then took a seat and continued, "I'm not. That's what this is, Hawke. Tell me. Do you know how many people go to jail in Lowtown on a weekly basis?"

"Most of you've seen the cell a couple of times."

A  _couple_  was an understatement.

"Kirkwall's circle of poverty is rigged, and the people do what they can to cope and make a living through something that's systematically devised. Government isn't interested in helping those people by liberating them from the circle of poverty. They're interested in silencing the masses and keeping their hands clean of users, even when we politely request their attention. It's about equal distribution. Ever wonder why all the government buildings are only located in Hightown? Because only the wealthy are in control. The one thing Lowtown has to stabilize its economy and individualize it is drug running, and they're digging into us to take it away. It's the last thing this side of town has left. Think Miami when all of the cocaine dealers were caught. The city virtually went bankrupt. That's going to be Lowtown."

"You do realize I'm looking at homes in Hightown right now."

"How did you get on your feet to do that?" Anders asked. "Without us importing and exporting cocaine with Isabela, we'd have nothing. You wouldn't have the Hanged Man."

Hawke grew quiet. "Then what's your plan to make them listen?"

The entire room grew quiet.

Anders cleared his throat. "That's currently in the preliminary phase."

He was a shallow man, someone who never saw beyond the perimeters of his circumstances and applied his centrism to others with hastily pasted motifs screaming for  _Viva La Revolucion_. Did he see the sex workers in the backrooms of Hightown being controlled through the distribution of hard drugs? Had he ever heard the way 'I love you' can be said with the finely cut lines of an eight ball and sound so convincing, symphonic in nature? Anders knew nothing. He knew nothing about the workings of larger, richer cities with truly oppressive thumbs that pressed and  _pressed_. He would never know what it was like to suck someone's cock to make the monster stop dragging its tongue along the wall of his sternum because  _I cannot pay for this without your mercy. I will choke for you._

They discussed recruitment methods that sounded rather Girl Scout ("Hawke, you're in a prime location for enlistment.") and called it a night after a round of shots. Isabela and I stood there without a heavy breath until the light was turned off and the door shut. As soon as it closed, we both exhaled, and I removed her hands from me with sweating palms.

"I'm not on their side," she said, clearly infuriated her name had been dropped.

"He knows that," I muttered in distaste. "He would've invited you, otherwise."

Anders had left the manila folder on the table. I strode toward it, and even though it was dark, started to flip through the pages once again. Isabela leaned out the door to look for any lingering members and exhaled. She motioned for me to follow her into the hallway.

"We could use a drink after that."

"Go on," I said and continued scanning the documents. "I won't be long."

Isabela was too unnerved to bother dragging me with her. She left the room, shutting the door with a smack, and my phone buzzed seconds later. The heartbeat rhythm told me it was Hawke. I grabbed my phone and read his message. The text was an invitation to meet him for dinner at his place. I contemplated if I wanted to see him as I took pictures of the blueprints and finally the incomplete ingredients list in the back of the folder. Satisfied with what I had, I pocketed my phone without replying to Hawke and turned to abandon the room for a drink with Isabela.

I stepped outside the room with the intent to show Isabela the pictures, and someone grabbed my arm, suddenly propelling me toward the nearest wall. My back smacked against the wall, and I coughed. Black dots swam through my vision like tadpoles and cleared to reveal Anders posturing in front of me. As soon as I registered it was him, I jerked my arms down to escape his grip. The déjà vu of this incident dimmed the Chernobyl disaster.

He noticed I was evading eye contact. Anders caught my chin and made me look him in the eye. I jerked my face away. My sneer was making my face rigid.

"This would be a problem," Anders said softly, dangerously.

I rolled my jaw. "You've always been terrible at intimidation."

This was a lie. Anders and I weren't too different in terms of height, but I'd been socialized to be fearful in the presence of biological males. Fearful wasn't the right word at this point. Maybe frustrated, enraged, borderline hopeless. The travesty was how my sexuality skewed toward the monsters. But right then, Anders' hands on me were repulsive.

The innate tremble behind my clavicles reminded me of my shortcomings as male. Logically, my anatomical differences didn't make me any less of what I was, but moments like the one with Anders reinstated that I was a separate entity, devoid of any gender absolutism to the outside world. When he touched me, he handled me with the idea that my body was a feminine parcel. 

"Hardly," he murmured. "What did you see?"

I shunted his chest. "I must've been close to seeing something damning. Why don't you just disclose and save us both the time?"

His fingers snapped onto my hips. Another flash of remembrance followed. "Whatever you saw, Fenris, if you breathe a word about it, then you'll be going down with the rest of us. You've put yourself in the middle, and now I'm making sure you stay there. Your sense of right and wrong is entirely self-serving, and you're going to be alone if you act on it. Hawke, Isabela, Varric, Merrill and even Aveline depend on you keeping your tongue behind your teeth."

"Is this justice?"

"This is justice."

I shifted beneath the weight of his hands. "You're going to end up in prison again."

"My rightful place, according to you," Anders mumbled. He dug his fingers into my hipbones until I parted my lips and slowly pressed my tongue between my molars. More memories ate through me like maggots. Anders knew how to turn my flesh sentient, the urge to will itself away consuming. "I don't understand how you're alive. Tevinter drug lords melt when you're mentioned. But all I see is a child who can't kill a grudge."

Like a snapped branch, I drew back a clenched fist. Anders stopped the punch by latching onto my wrist, his nails digging into skin. We stared at one another for two seconds too long.  _I knew_. I knew I hated everything he stood for. He was ruination yet familiar enough to give me nostalgia for a time when life seemed simple. There had been a life before all of this. Had I been  _good_  and remained in Tevinter, then I could've had consistency. Wealthy consistency, even. I might've been a mule, but with that price came a certain future.

Our mouths firmly pressed against one another's, and he caught beneath my thighs before hiking me up so that my ankles crossed at the small of his back. I avoided the spikes on his shoulders and cupped both sides of his face instead, the act practiced. The tip of his tongue eagerly pressed between my lips, and when I consented, my shoulders tensed. Stomach acid gushed toward my esophagus in response to every one of his touches, but I opened my mouth with a breathless moan because I wanted it to feel good. That same tongue had laved between my legs just over two years ago, sending me into a fit of ecstasy, perpetuated by a finely cut line. Everything felt different when sober, though. Nothing was enjoyable.

The wall became my support, and Anders caught my ribcage's sides only to pause. He withdrew from the kiss with a final wet pop and felt along the outline of my bandages through the black top. He dropped his hands with a disapproving stare.

"Bandages are dangerous," he muttered. "Buy a binder."

I unwrapped my legs and dropped to the floor. We looked away from one another while catching our breath. There was nothing to say.

I strode away from him, through the kitchen and into the bar. Without consulting Isabela, I ducked beneath the bar and headed toward the door. There was no moon overhead, Kirkwall's oppressive lighting killing the many suns along with the lunar disappearing act. I breathed in deep and remembered I hadn't replied to Hawke.

Something told me the text derived from his guilt. This irked me as I strode down the sidewalk. I made a note to text Isabela so that she'd know CERCLE hadn't taken me prisoner, and as my walk continued, I stared dully at my phone's screen. My mouth was still warm from Anders' subpar kiss. It tingled and registered the ache in my chest over and over again. Whenever I conceded to that behavior I always expected something more, but it reminded me why I'd left Tevinter in the first. Dead affections were just that, dead. Forcing myself to want something, someone, was emptying.  

A black SUV pulled up alongside me, and through my peripheral vision I knew who it was. There was hardly any mistaking the meticulously washed vehicle with its silver headlights and tinted windows. Had it been any other day, then I might've ran, taken a pivotal turn toward the nearest alleyway and found refuge in Darktown.

But it wasn't any other day.

I stopped walking and the car shifted into park. I couldn't see who was in the driver's seat, the windows dark with minimal illumination from the car's interior. Whoever was inside was waiting; watching me with the same numbing expectation the rest of the world seemed to. This pull was stronger, though. This pull derived from years of illicit behavior and the comfort of consistent, raw exploitation. I thought of thighs spreading, a child pulling first the wings off a living fly and then its twitching legs.

Hawke texted me again, and the same dull rhythm vibrated against my skin.

My fingers reached for the passenger door's handle, and I tugged it open with a familiar yank. I didn't look at the driver's face when I slid into the leather seat. Instead, I shut the door with a soft snap and stared forward. Maybe, in the morning, things would be different. Maybe, when I woke up in a foreign bed with a heavy head and that predictable disappointment, my perspective would stop being so existential.  _Something had to give_ , I told myself.  _This can't continue forever. Life is not constant melancholy._

The driver shifted gears, and I turned off my phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to finally decide on the direction of this story, which seems like a pile of frustration, meandering angst, but there's actually supposed to be a defined path. This isn't a short story -- we're talking 100k word potential -- so that explains the unfortunate pacing. Anyway, thanks for commenting and being so kind. I intended on posting this sooner, but my mom's been hospital bound.


	4. Merlot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a little longer, because I'm twenty-two and have moments of serious existentialism that take me off the grid for days at a time. That said, thank you so much for commenting and leaving kudos. I'm so thankful for the few people keeping up with this. But seriously, someone please help Fenris. Help this child. Where are the adults here? Why are the communication skills so terrible? I need answers for my own story.

Birds were crooning and my dorm room was illuminated by dawn's first torrent when Hawke reached for a half-finished water jug and poured it over my head. The choked glug of water dispensing on my face went on long enough for me to wake up, sputter, and in a sleep-induced stupor, consider the possibility that I'd fallen off one of Wounded Coast's bluffs. Vaguely disappointed to discover I was in my bed and _not_  drowning, the realization rectified me and was punctually followed by anger. Hawke dismissed me backhanding the jug across the room, and instead reached beneath me and threw me over his shoulder as if I were a sack.

"Get  _out_ of my room."

"In twenty-four hours this isn't  _your_  room anymore, Legs." He deposited me onto my desk and the landing rippled through my body, straightening my neck. "You're in my way."

Water dripped down my nose, and I reached up with my palms to rub my eyes as the hangover lurched for my cognition. After several dizzying seconds, I grabbed my trashcan and vomited with a force that turned my shoulder blades to spikes and eyes to rivers. This vomiting was aggressive; my body's punishment for the night before. All I could do was take the beating for ingesting enough poison to kill a horse. Hawke glanced at me from the corner of his eye, but he said nothing until I was finished.

"Dump that," he said and handed me his water bottle. "I need the can."

I was still panting when I wobbled to my feet. Down the hallway stood a waist-high trashcan where I deposited the warm bag, but I took a moment to grip the rim and catch my breath. The night before returned to me like flashes from a car crash, and I returned to the room with a stronger sense of what was going on. Packed liquor boxes were stacked on top of one another and created pillars against a freshly blank wall. Hawke had stripped the bedding while I was trashing my puke and stuffed the linen into a thick plastic bag. Somehow, I'd slept through him assembling my belongings into a transportable state, and guilt perforated my earlier anger.

Hawke stood in front of my desk with that halved whiskey bottle in hand. He realized I'd returned and gave me a warm glance over his shoulder.

I reached for my toothbrush.

"You still have this thing?"

I hastily applied toothpaste and shoved the bristles between my teeth.

Hawke continued. "That night seems far away."

"Because it is," I murmured, dripping foam.

He exhaled a stream of controlled breath. I crinkled my nose at myself and finished scrubbing my tongue. My entire existence was based around the fact I couldn't keep my impulsive mouth closed. Half the things I said would've made less impact if I spoke more, but I didn't. Everything I said had to make a point. Years of being told to only speak if it was important had configured me into a dimwit.

"Let me see it," I said after rinsing my mouth and setting my toothbrush into the caddy.

Hawke handed it over, and the glass was cold and heavy in my palm. I fondly inspected the amateur glasswork with a tilt. It  _had_  been a long time ago, but I vividly recalled the night he gave it to me; behind the Hanged Man with my back against brick and his mouth hovering in front of my ear. No matter what I said to Hawke, it was a relic for my day-to-day endurance. He seemed to understand this, which was how he knew the cue for my accessibility.

His arm, an appendage that appeared thicker than my waist, wrapped around me from behind. He pressed his mouth against my temple, and though it wasn't a kiss, it was close enough. I rubbed the opposite side of my head with closed eyes and set the bottle down with a resonating thud.

"When are you going to come back to me?" Hawke murmured into my untamed hair.

I reached up to drag my fingers over the top of his hand. "It's not a good day to talk about this."

"I'm beginning to think it'll never be."

Varric threw open the door with a cooler in hand, and we jolted a part. The sudden emptiness around my waist was startling, and I dropped my fingers onto the desk. My knuckles cracked on impact, forcing me to hiss, and I eagerly rubbed them with a grunt. Hawke snatched up the bin I'd returned with and started rapidly stuffing it full with fistfuls of scrap paper he'd found beneath my bed, only pausing to appreciate an add that'd fallen out of one of my romantic pornographic magazines.

"My  _bad_. Didn't mean to startle the doves. I'll leave if this is where you want to build your nest, but even I have better standards for you two."

Anders appeared behind him. My blood pressure pulsed.

"He's finally awake," Anders said and seemed to be in a neutral mood.

I was still trying to figure out how I'd even managed to get there. "I'm awake."

"Did you find any ripe bodies under the bed?" Varric asked.

"Mushrooms and all," Hawke assured and laughed at my disapproval. "Don't look so briny."

Varric handed Hawke a sandwich and sat down on a Rubbermaid tub. "You know, Fenris, for such a minimalist, you sure do have an excess of shit. We've already started loading."

"I assured them you weren't dead." Anders raised a judging brow. "We let you sleep."

I pointedly sat as far away from Anders as possible while eating, but it didn't matter. Neither one of us was going to pick a fight. It was strange behavior for us, but my hangover could've killed a less capable person. While carefully depositing the avocado slices Hawke had given me from his sandwich onto my bread, I accidentally flicked my gaze toward Anders. It was then I realized he was cutting the two of us a speculative stare, which was actually reasonable considering what Varric had caught us doing.

"Do you have a bed at your place yet?" Hawke asked.

That was a loaded question. "I plan on buying one soon."

"What's _soon_?"

"Tomorrow." I paused. "Before work."

"You could always stay at my place," Varric offered. "It's not much, but it's better than the floor."

Hawke visibly tensed. "Or mine. Since it's literally where he works."

Anders looked as if he was about to go cross-eyed.

" _Or_ ," I started, "I could sleep on the floor."

"Incredible," Anders said. "Almost as if he doesn't have to be comfortable all the time."

It was my turn to go cross-eyed.

We finished as the sun was setting. Having dragged box after box through heavy metal doors until each car was stuffed and our biceps ached, none of us was in the mood for a conversation. But as we were leaving for Isabela's house, I realized something was wrong. Opening and closing my palm, I did my best to recall what was missing. Because that's what it was. It was emptiness. At first, I figured it was seeing my dorm barren. There was nothing quite like removing one's self from a place and starting fresh. Melancholy was bound to ensue. That wasn't the case in this situation.

My eyebrows rose. "Hawke, have you seen my phone?"

He was opening and closing drawers for a final room check. As I tried to remember if my phone was in my jacket, I removed the key from my ring so that I could slide it under the RA's door with a note explaining I'd moved out. We were both anticipating the drinks and Chinese food Isabela had ordered for us. It was all we'd been able to talk about for the past hour, but my appetite was quickly dying from nerves.

"I might've tossed it into a bag," he said, cautious but unconvinced by his words.

"Did you find me in bed this morning?"

"Where else would I've found you?" We stared one another down, and I knew we were both considering the time he'd found me dead asleep behind his bar. " _Fair enough_. Love, you were here this morning. Isabela didn't think you'd be when she called me to check in on you, because you weren't answering anyone last night. We thought you were ignoring us again. You know, you do that. Are you sure you haven't had the thing all day?"

"We've been occupied." I made a beeline for the door. "It's not like I text anyone outside of the group."

This initiated a panicked, fevered search. Hawke called my phone, which was perpetually on vibrate, and then Varric, and even Anders after he'd seen the dread on my face. Boxes were torn open, bags emptied along back seats, and my mouth turned to sandpaper when it was becoming more and more evident the phone wasn't within a mile of us. It didn't matter how deep I dug into the recesses of my packed belongings. A knowing sensation was burning my chest like acid reflux, and when I climbed over the final junk pile, it was clear what had happened. I knew exactly where my phone was and who had it.

"Fuck  _me_ ," I snapped and raked my fingers through my hair. Once out of Anders' car, I crouched down beside the tire and held it. " _Fuck_."

"What the hell is going on?" Varric asked Hawke.

"His phone's gone," Anders explained. For once I didn't care that he was speaking for me. "And he was out last night. With unfavorable company, it seems."

"People lose their phones all the time," Varric said. "If he has insurance on it with a backed up Cloud, then it's fine."

"Unless you have something on the phone you don't want anyone to see," Anders countered.

Hawke stepped in front of me. I blinked at his shoes. "Was there something on the phone, Fenris?"

"Everything," I said. " _Everything_  is on that phone."

He reached down to grab my bicep and pulled me up. "Everything? You mean,  _everything_?"

I couldn't look him in the eye. " _Everything_."

The silence built, and when it occurred to him what that meant, he whistled.

"I can't believe you didn't delete those." Hawke took a moment to think, vaguely becoming cocky. "Dare I ask what exactly you were still doing with 'em?"

"Don't make it into a joke."

"It's almost been two years. I'd assumed you'd have deleted," he said and then shifted his weight. He dropped the joke and then cleared his throat, suddenly conscious of the friends within earshot. Hawke ran his fingers through his bangs. "The pictures were on it, and then that, you know, _other_  thing? Was that still on it?"

Varric chuckled. "Isabela is going to be upset she missed this."

Anders curled a lip. "I'd trade places with her."

"But it's locked?" Hawke asked. He'd realized this directly impacted him. I could see it in his tightening jaw. "There's no way someone could actually get into the bloody thing, right?"

"Danarius _always_  finds a way."

The chill that followed my statement made Hawke go quiet. Admitting where I'd been the night before hadn't come from the need for a dramatic cue, but because Hawke deserved to know where countless images of him, the both us and then that damning video had ended up. Even so, Hawke had raised a good point. I hadn't had reason to keep the pictures and video. It wasn't like they held any significance anymore. I hadn't bothered watching or looking at them in months. They'd just been there; taking up memory storage and sometimes popping up as a reminder that, once upon a time, I'd entrusted much more of myself in him than was considered reasonable.

"We should go and unload," Varric said and handed me my car keys. "We might still find it."

We didn't. But I'd known we wouldn't.

Isabela was on the back deck with food when we arrived carting in arms full of boxes. Varric brushed past me and dropped his box on the floor before taking the quickest path to her. I knew what he was doing. The group had no secrets, and Hawke would've told her anyway, but the way he leaned down with a wrinkled forehead bothered me. This wasn't the usual form of gossip where we could laugh about it in a month. Evidently, I'd done something that was more than just humiliating. Had it only been the phone and not Danarius, then she would've laughed, but Isabela didn't even crack a smile. She jerked her head toward Varric as soon as his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth to pronounce Danarius' name, and I watched her mouth the word ' _what_.' Her shoulders then sank and she sipped her drink while Varric continued to push whispers in her ear, appraising me as if I couldn't see.

"I didn't know he had it in him."

"We all knew he had _it_  in him." Varric shifted and sat down beside her. "But it's where he was that's the problem."

"Is there a rehabilitation center for this?" She murmured.

Varric plucked an egg roll out of the wax paper bag. "It's called a restraining order."

Hawke was halfway up the stairs when he called out to me. "Just going to stand there and look handsome? You're not getting out of carrying those boxes in, Fernis."

> _The cinematic moments where the protagonist is seen lying on his bed, arm covering half his face and despondently looking to the side are not supposed to happen to real people. They're figments of a creator's romanticization of torment, purely a farce to make humanity think it's not nearly half as shallow as it really is. It isn't until this moment happens to you that you start to understand the world's yearning for solidarity, the webs and pathways people leave behind in their shitty media, journals, final expositions. It's always for love. But why is it always love? And why is it always love that's too damn late? A barely missed train. Doors closing in your face so you can watch the person drift away, right out of reach._

There's no rest for the wicked, and so it came as no surprise we were having a bonfire on the beach the following weekend, saying goodbye to the final threads of lukewarm weather with heavy drinking and Varric's dusty bong. Sweater swaddled with a can of beer in hand, I was standing beside the fire, watching sparks burst like squeezed orange slices. For days I hadn't had much to say, but this seemed reasonable, or so I tried to convince myself it did. Hawke hadn't spoken to me beyond necessity, Danarius had the most private recordings and pictures of me to ever exist, and the people I'd befriended had no reason to trust me anymore.

"Why does the water already have to be cold?" Isabela complained, taking off her socks and shoes. She rolled her black pants to her knees and determinedly strode toward the tide.

"You're going to get pneumonia!" Hawke called out to her.

Merrill nervously watched from beside me before removing her own shoes and following in Isabela's footsteps. It was no mystery Merrill was experiencing a case of unrequited love with Isabela. Whether or not anything would happen between them was undeterminable, but more than once I'd heard Isabela coo in Merrill's ear with her trilling accent and those soft-spoken pet names. Truthfully, that didn't mean much considering she cooed in my ear every chance she got. One drunken make out session had made me fair game for almost two years, and she swore I'd grabbed her left boob that night. This probably did happen, but it was in my power to say it hadn't.

"When're you going to get a new phone?" Hawke asked, and I clutched my beer. He'd been quiet, mostly talking to Varric about the Hanged Man.

"Maybe never."

He leaned over my shoulder. "Avoiding me, it seems."

"Possibly." I tilted my head away from him, but there was no escape. Hawke pressed his lips to my cheek, squished them against it and then blew a long, obnoxious raspberry into my skin. He was on his fifth beer. "Could you try not to make them so wet?"

"We're making progress," he murmured into my skin. "You used to tell me not to make them at all."

"How many beers have you had?" I asked. "You're talking to me again."

"It's hard to talk to someone in this day and age when he doesn't have a phone. Did you think I was avoiding you?" He straightened his back when I didn't say anything. He _had_  been avoiding me. Not a word during work hours. Hardly a look, even when I needed his help with drunken slobs. "Well, I'm not happy about it. Hope you weren't expecting me to be. Some old man with a Newton's cradle for balls is wanking it to my Five-Point-Palm-Exploding-Heart-Technique."

"Why would you call it that?"

"We could always call it by its real name." I watched him make a fisting gesture.

" _Enough_. I'm only asking you don't make it sound like I'm giving you a hard time. I've been ill since I realized what happened. That along with knowing Danarius has fresh material of me, the humiliation of not deleting them in the first place and ultimately betraying your trust makes it difficult to comfortably receive your affection." I chugged the rest of my beer and crushed the can. "I don't expect anything from you, Hawke. I don't expect you to even be my friend anymore." The anger in my expression faded and relaxed into a frown. "I've been an idiot."

"You have, but why did you go with him?" Hawke pretended the tab on his can was something interesting. "He could've done much worse. What if he'd dropped you in a ditch or _kept_  you?"

"I wish I had an answer."

"He's never going to give you the things you want. Those hormones and surgeries are what he's controlling you with. If I could give them to you right now, then I would. But I  _can't_. And you can't keep wrecking yourself because we're broke and you're pissed things take time for broke men."

"I don't even know if I want those things. You're oversimplifying my reasoning."

"And you're making me fucking mental with this because there is _no_  reasoning."

"If you think there's no reason, then why do you keep inserting yourself into the problem?"

Hawke grabbed another beer for me and opened it. "Because that's what  _this_ is."

A bubbly gurgle interrupted whatever moment we were having.

"How about you two go play in that water and cool off?" Varric said with the bong propped up on his thigh. I'd forgotten he was there. "I can't stand your shit anymore. This is what happens when the friend group gets incestuous. Inbreeding works the first time, never the second. You two were once narcissistic enough to have sex and record it for posterity, because you _liked_  each other. Get over it."

Varric had used past tense.

I suddenly downed half the beer and started taking off my shoes. "I'm going into the water."

"You go into that water," Hawke muttered.

"You're coming with me."

If there was a way for me to explain myself, to tell him I was sorry, then right then I would've done it. But that's the thing about despair and the whirlpool that's never having satisfying answers. People are always trying to define their situations and make sense of them, and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to give Hawke some kind of answer for what was transpiring instead of letting him dive face first into the situation. Floundering by myself was bad enough, but if there was one call in my life that was entirely up to me, then it was Garrett Hawke.

"I  _was_  ignoring you," Hawke admitted as we strode toward the water, sans socks and shoes. He unexpectedly wrapped his arms around my waist to lift me so that my feet barely missed the reeling tide. My toes hit the wet sand as soon as it pulled away. "I'm still pissed."

I tugged up my leggings and then waited to let the tide rush into me. "I know."

> _Calling into work twice in one week doesn't make for a shiny employer and employee relations. Pretty Boy covered both of my shifts again, and I was able to sleep off how shitty I've been feeling. But then I still woke up feeling like shit since he's a student, so it's a no win. He stopped by even though it was almost three in the morning just to bring food and tell me about the fight he got into with my best friend. At first he tried to blow it off and fool me, but the longer he talked, the more upset he became, which was how we ended up talking about things that really dig into him until the sun came up; junk, the obligation to finish university, isolation, and then he got me really good today when he finally mentioned what we've all known since meeting him. I tried to tell him Lowtown wasn't a place where people cared whether or not the downstairs matched how someone perceived himself, but he told me to shut up and listen, so I did._

Hawke's apartment had a small balcony that I'd used while living in the dorm, and for some reason, continued to use even after moving into Isabela's. Considering I worked double the hours I used to and had a home with all the typical housing conveniences, there was no reason for me to spend so much time in his apartment. It was years of habit I hadn't mentally prepared myself to disengage.

"What trash are you reading today?"

"Another Goodwill Special," I murmured and tucked my bare feet beneath me.

From where I sat, I could see Hawke wandering his apartment. He was shirtless.

Being a part of an integrated friend group that softly labels itself as a nuclear family establishes strange anchors. Hawke and I weren't aimlessly drinking coffee in his apartment that afternoon, washing enamel from our teeth for the sake of company. It was an unspoken ritual for us before we spent the evening at Merrill's unavoidable Sunday dinner. Even when we were at our most damned, we somehow all found our way into her miniature cape cod cottage that was only a four minute walk from the docks. The stench of belly-up fish revolted me, but Hawke insisted it was a part of Lowtown's charm. I'd dared to ask 'what charm' once and was bombarded with a nightlong lecture.

"Do you remember the first question I asked when you applied at the Hanged Man?"

The twang of Hawke tuning his guitar made me look up from Sandra Hill's  _My Fair Viking_.

I didn't remember. "Where are your recommendations?"

"No one in Lowtown asks for recommendations," he said and then started to strum.

It took me two seconds to recognize what he was playing. "You asked if I liked Oasis."

"And what did you say?"

"That I was neutral toward Oasis."

He hissed in disapproval. "I _hate_  Oasis."

"That sounds like a personal problem."

Hawke smiled, and I returned it.

One wouldn't have guessed it, but we weren't on good terms. The knowledge of Danarius having my phone had left me turned inside out. It'd exposed pinkish vessels and each breeze was like salt being tipped onto a gaping wound. He'd taken his knife and dug it in only to twist and carve out his brand once again, but this wasn't a foreign affair. This take-and-take relationship had been spun from years of relentless desperation and pride, and it was only through exposure that I hadn't reached for either side of my throat and dug my fingers through due to this ultimate humiliation. There were moments when he made me feel as if my body were wax. Something that, if heated, could be easily mangled.

"Are you okay?" Hawke asked.

"My coffee could be warmer, but there's hardly room for complaint."

"You haven't told me about what it's like living with Isabela."

"Nor do I think it's an interesting thing to talk about." I shut my book with a snap and set it aside. "Though I consider it a betrayal you didn't tell me I was moving into a nudist commune. The heads up would've been a kind gesture. I woke up the other morning and thought I wanted eggs, only to run into Zevran after he'd attempted to fertilize Isabela's. He called me beautiful, and Isabela had to remind him I wasn't the type to join in. But I'll admit his charm is a dangerous commodity."

"Did you get your eggs?"

"No. I didn't get my eggs."

"Your life is a tragedy down to the finest details. Zevran is what I like to call  _friendly_."

"Isabela told me you two were with him  _together_."

"Is _this_ the thing you're going to be scandalized over?"

"Hardly," I said and steered myself toward my mug. "I never knew."

"I'm sure there are plenty things about you I don't know."

Anders was the first thing that came to mind.

"You play a fair hand." I stood to grab my jacket. "We should go."

Hawke and I walked to Merrill's home. She greeted us at the door with two bottles of Merlot in hand and laughed when I raised an eyebrow. The night had turned cold, but she had her back porch set up for dinner, table and all. None of us were particularly fond of the indoors, but there was no denying the weeks were getting colder, the sea grayer and the sun less brilliant. Hawke greeted her with a grin and cupped both sides of her face before kissing her forehead, and Merrill bubbled over with joy. Hawke did that to everyone. Everyone was special to him, and the danger was how he let them know.

Varric walked through the door behind us and then exchanged a knowing look with Hawke.

I observed it, but there was no room for me to ask about it.

Merrill wasn't the best cook on the face of the planet, but she tried. That was the general appreciation of Sunday dinner. It also gave us another excuse to drink. We all worked, and most of us worked together, but when we sat down around her backyard dining table with Solo cups of iced wine in hand, passing around lighters and eating underdone baked potatoes, the normalcy reminded us we had a unified calm. Isabela, being Isabela, settled her cheek on my shoulder as she told me about her day at the docks while Varric and Hawke bickered with Anders about socialism, which somehow devolved into a discussion about the Bering Strait theory.

Hawke loudly drummed his hands along the edge of the table. "I have an announcement."

"An announcement?" I asked and Isabela snorted for some reason.

"Both of you act like the adults you pretend to be and let me finish," he said and cleared his throat. He was nervous, which was why I perked up and Isabela quit leaning on me. "Aveline met me at the gym last week to tell me that I've been being scouted for the past couple months, and finally, some sponsorships were brought to the table. She's a network in herself, but she always said she wanted me to do this on my own, and I finally have. I've got two contracts right now that she wants me to seriously consider. Apparently, word of mouth in Lowtown is still enough to get recognized these days. I was going to wait on it to tell everyone, but figured this is the only time we'd be together this week."

Merrill opened her mouth to say something, but she could only say his name in relief.

"All the gym fees and protein powder are finally paying off," Isabela said and grabbed her glass. "That's great, Hawke. Are you going to sign one immediately?"

"There are a few things that have to be figured out. The Hanged Man's not running itself. A lot of travel is involved. But Varric agreed to hold down the fort until we figured out a system."

My tongue dried as uncertainty built on the back of my tongue. Hawke's happiness was important to all of us. When we had nothing, then he was there with a piece of himself to give. He kept us balanced, constantly content, but what I was thinking, and surely I couldn't have been the only one, was how lost we would be without him. Instead of voicing this or even appearing bothered, I raised my glass to him. He winked at me and returned the gesture, but we broke eye contact almost too quickly.

"But what about that house in Hightown?" Anders asked, evidently a little cool in tone.

Hawke deceived himself and glanced my way. "I've decided it's not a good time."

My blood curdled as the table went quiet.

"Then it works out. Who cares about a house?" Anders interjected to save the mood, but he only made it worse. Somehow, I wanted to believe he hadn't done it to be cruel. Even the nastiest people in times of desperation could be given the benefit of the doubt. "You've worked for this, so I drink to that."

"Agreed!" Merrill said and raised her glass.

Hawke appeared appreciative, but I sat there sickened.

To know Hawke had been milling over sponsorships and scouts for weeks without bringing it to my attention could only inspire two sensations; betrayal and self-loathing. No longer were we sharing things with one another, and this distance between us had been forming before I'd even lost my phone. Whatever the walk to that empty house had meant was no longer relevant to him, and I hadn't even realized it was relevant to me until that moment.

"Congratulations," I said and finished the rest of my drink.


	5. SMIRNOFF® Whipped Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is incredibly NSFW at the end and involves comfortable intimacy between a transman and cisman that was hard earned throughout the characters' histories. It should also be noted that Fenris' POV allows a horrible bias that shouldn't be entirely trusted, which extends into his opinions of other characters aka Anders.

There were times when Lowtown was quiet. This quietness was when the air possessed an indigo haze and locals jogged to and from the gym before their blue-collar shifts.

I'd only noticed the quietude upon dropping out. There were a lot of reasons for this, but the main one was because Hawke and I either didn't move before noon or we got breakfast in a hung over miasma that didn't warrant esteemed awareness. It was when the bagel shops opened, the coffee dripped from industrial grade machines and those who couldn't afford to live in Hightown, but worked there, scurried up the steep hills and into the upper-crust alcove. The soft rush reminded me of shaking branches in autumn, and this point in the day had become a personal favorite that was incentive for going to bed before midnight.

During the week, and every other Saturday, Hawke was also an early riser. It was why I left the couch after a single cup of coffee and strode from the townhouse to a nearby bakery for guava-cream cheese pastries and more coffee. From there, it was to the gym where Hawke spent his mornings with Aveline who was always yelling, jabbing her finger in his face and respectively sending him on his ass as soon as I stepped inside. She had a sensor that let her know exactly when it was time to humiliate the man in front of me. I had long since accepted it was her response to the fact I brought Hawke food she strongly believed to be garbage.

"That looked painful," I said, standing outside the ring with coffee at the ready.

Aveline righted her blue Nike cap and pointed at me.

"Stop feeding the animals."

Hawke was on his back when he looked my way. Sweaty and red-faced, he flashed a row of white teeth, and I was tempted to smile back as I lifted the bag of carbohydrates alongside the drink carrier. Hawke eyed them both and waggled his eyebrows at the peace offering the same way he did whenever he managed to get me to take off my clothes.

This awarded him an indignant sigh and pursed lips.

He laughed and didn't attempt to pacify me.

"You woke up on the sweet side of the bed."

"I bring you food twice a week."

"More than that," Aveline muttered and rolled her eyes before checking the digital clock on the wall. "I'm done with you for the day. You're free to be with your oblivious swain. _Don't_  be late again tomorrow morning. Actually, be early. We're going to watch matches, and that'll eat up time that could be spent in here."

"Oh, Aveline, you would be such a good mother," he said.

Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she abandoned Hawke for her office, passing me with a quick shoulder squeeze and sigh.

"Do I get a kiss?" Hawke asked as he reacquainted himself with the concrete floor. I blew a raspberry, and it was so uncharacteristic of me he laughed. "What was  _that_?"

"I spent twenty dollars on pastries and coffee. There's your kiss."

He reached for my hips and pulled me closer, and though I let him, I still turned my head when he leaned down.

"You're  _really_ not going to kiss me?"

I gave him a peck, but then quickly looked away again. Hawke made an exasperated grunt and grabbed the coffee and pastries to set them aside.

"Quit being so damn cheeky, you bird," he muttered.

" _You're_  the bird."

"Has it been that long since we kissed? Why don't you let me reacquaint you with the act in the shower? I know you're better than that, but a refresher seems to be in order."

Both of my hands clasped over his mouth, and he chuckled.

We hadn't talked about what he'd announced at Merrill's house, but that tended to be the theme between us.

Discussion came too late, always when the damage was irreparable and the house condemned. Sometimes it was as if we were picking at the scraps of a demolition, pretending we'd constructed a home with historical merit when really we were deluding ourselves time and time again. I wanted foundations and he needed mobility, but he was always stuck and I was in constant motion.

"You're the least modest person I know," he said.

"I'm going to refrain from asking _why_ you believe that."

Hawke took his coffee and firmly pressed his lips against my temple.

"I'm joking,  _beau idéal_. You're the paradigm for a vestal."

"You're desperate for that shower with me."

"I want that shower. No. I _need_  that shower."

"Not to be the bearer of unfortunate truths, but Irish accents and French together remind me of a congested frog."

He cleared his throat, and in the thickest Irish accent I'd ever heard said, "I want to fuck yer tight arse and suck on your diddies, Fenris."

"That's attractive," I deadpanned.

"Thought you'd like that. It always gets 'em juicy."

"Your mother is such a saint. How did you come from her, again?"

"You never met good ole Malcolm Hawke."

He ate his pastry and told me about his progress with Aveline. I listened, asked the appropriate questions and then realized, much to my dismay, that the usual anticipation to listen to him was gutted by likely loss. Hawke was going to leave for long stints of time, and I knew that meant I'd be on the run again. It was selfish to be so unhappy for him.

"Anders asked me to go to a CERCLE meeting."

I stopped mid-sip and said nothing.

"Get it off your chest."

"I think the entire organization is barbaric and going to get someone killed."

"Right." Hawke nodded. "But it's hypocritical of me not to stand by him."

"Since when are you so diplomatic?"

"Since I bought a business and started feeling responsible for every single person I love's wellbeing. If I go under, then we all go under. Deciding to travel for these fights was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in regards to my family and friends. It took Varric sitting me down and telling me it's the right thing to do, that I  _deserve_  it, before I went to Aveline."

"You know what it did to me."

Hawke took my hand and I ripped it away, but then exhaled and clasped his hand in an immediate apology. He accepted the rapid misgiving.

" _He_  did that.  _They_  didn't. I'm not using smack to make you love me."

"It'd probably be easier for you that way." I paused and groaned. "That was unsavory."

"Please," Hawke said, almost desperate, "never say that again, Fenris."

"I didn't mean it."

"I know you didn't, but you still said it."

Hawke continued the conversation about his fights from before, then showering alone once he finished his breakfast. Afterward, we walked to the Hanged Man, and when we entered, it was entirely empty inside, still dark.

The quietness established the place's vacancy and the hum of the bar refrigerator created a sleepy ambiance that made a mid-morning nap sound enticing. Hawke yelled for his pit bull, and I smiled at the loud dog whine.

"I have this idea," Hawke said and grabbed the leash.

"The earth is bracing itself."

"You're such a brat," he muttered with a chuckle that rumbled with my pulse.

I twisted my mouth to the side in self-satisfaction, but before I could snap back with something witty, he wrapped his arms around me from behind and swayed me to the side. I exhaled heavily through my nose when he buried his face into my throat but didn't protest. He was being open about what he wanted, but there was no pressure to do more than appreciate his desire to touch me. Truthfully, Hawke sustained on flirting, which was why I found myself continuously doubting his intentions.

"We should go on a road trip."

"A road trip to where?"

"Go to Ireland with me."

"Hawke," I started and realized I sounded as if I were scolding him, "that's not a road trip. That's an expensive leisure trip that requires more time than a weekend. It's a literal ocean away."

Pig barked at us from the top of the stairs, wanting his walk, and Hawke apologized.

"You've spent  _much_  longer with me than a weekend."

"This is still sudden."

"Listen, love. I want you to meet Malcolm."

> _There are a lot of things I wish I'd asked before my old man kicked the bucket. You never think about asking your parents life questions because you've got no reason to when in your early twenties, but the untapped wisdom becomes evident as soon as they're gone. I've been thinking about this a lot. Trying to cope with life and love loss are the worst things to run against blind, but everyone does it. Maybe that's why we're all so fucked up._
> 
> _I would've asked him how he loved my mother. What did he do to convince her American heart it was right to come back to Ireland after her study abroad? How did he handle the news that he was dying and leaving behind three children and a wife he'd adored from the moment he met her? When exactly is it time to acknowledge that love is unrequited and you should quit trying? He'd know how to answer those questions with the smile I supposedly replicate, but he's not here, and it's like I'm knocking my fist against the door to the other side. I want that beer with him. I need that conversation. Someone needs to tell me what to do, but he's not answering._
> 
> _Today I told Pretty Boy I love him. He didn't say anything back._

We stood in the park together with Pig leashed. Hawke's red hoodie was drowning me, but I'd opted for that over freezing.

"If we go to Ireland, then shouldn't we extend the invite to your family?"

"Carver and Mom were there recently."

"You didn't go?"

"I haven't been back since we moved."

When he reached up to brush aside his bangs, I noticed the shift in his gaze.

"Why haven't you been back?"

"Because," Hawke said and cleared his throat, "I wasn't ready to say sorry."

"What do you have to apologize for?" I asked and reached up for a branch. "It's been  _years_."

"I wasn't there for him."

He didn't look at me when I plucked the crispy leaf. Not knowing what to say, and also figuring there wasn't much to say in the first place, I handed him the leaf. Hawke chuckled when he took it and examined the dead plant with a raised eyebrow, but he pocketed it.

"I should've showered with you," I said, too bluntly, after a long pause.

"Pity sex sounds terrible right now."

"Going down to Tunatown, Texas is never terrible."

He laughed.

" _Fenris_."

"I'm quoting you."

Hawke looped an arm around my waist and tugged me to his side. It was me who reached for his hand and laced our fingers.

"I've never been to Ireland before."

It's terrible loving someone you know you're not allowed to be with. Self-awareness dictates this allowance, and while most would've stripped their lives for just a moment with someone like Garrett Hawke, I took those moments and suffocated the life out of them because I knew myself. I knew there was no room for someone like me in his life. After all that he'd been through, Hawke needed a sliver of stability, which was the last thing I had to offer. This didn't mean I didn't want him with every fiber of my being, but I couldn't do that to him. It wasn't fair.

I thought about running away more often than not.

When we started to walk in the direction of Hawke's apartment, I had all the intentions in the world of sucking Hawke off until he was raw and ready to sleep for five hours. It wasn't pity sex like he'd assumed. In that moment, I genuinely wanted to love him the one way I knew how.

"Anders, you're _really_  early."

But as always, my timing was patronizingly off.

Anders was standing in front of the Hanged Man with a cigarette in hand and coffee. Coffee for him and Hawke and an exclusive meeting I wasn't invited to. This didn't miff me in the way one would be offended due to being excluded. I was bothered because that meant Hawke was going to find a way to disengage me for Anders' company when the time came.

"I'm going to go then," I said and tugged Hawke's sweatshirt over my head before tossing it toward his chest. "I'm not interested in the kind of discussion you two are bound to have, and I can't fathom my presence being needed. Sorry for imposing on you. I now realize I invited myself along without asking."

Hawke groaned and reached for my wrist.

There was no reason to stick around, and without looking at Anders, I evaded Hawke's grab and calmly strode back to my house. I knew he wouldn't follow me.

When I stepped through the front door, there was the sharp smack of a liquor bottle colliding with the kitchen counter. It was too early for even Isabela to be drinking, but when I turned the corner into the kitchen, there she was with an arsenal of liquor bottles in front of her. She spread her arms out wide in front of them and posed with uneven shoulders.

"We're having a party tonight."

* * *

"Fenris, how much did you drink?"

"Enough."

Words tasted like food, and that forced more bile up the sides of my throat, burning my nose and causing my arms' tendons to tighten. A hand reached forward for my forehead to push back my hanging hair, but I tensed at Isabela's proximity. Whether or not she noticed didn't matter, because she planted herself behind me. Her judging grimace was burning holes through my skull, and I wanted to shove her off.

"You realize you don't have to coddle me. I think I puked on Merrill's jacket. Yes. That would be her jacket.  _Good_."

She tugged me back and tightly gripped my shoulders.

"Is that all of it? Are you  _done_?"

"That amount of vomit didn't seem natural, did it?"

"Fenris," she muttered with a hint of warning. "Fenris, you can sleep in my bed if you want to. I know Varric's in yours already."

I checked my black wristwatch and raised an eyebrow.

"It's one o'clock."

"And you're shitfaced."

I needed water.

"So it seems."

We headed downstairs, and there it was; the urge to runaway. It brushed its fingers across my face as we headed through the crowd and music's throbbing fog, making our way to her refrigerator so that I could retrieve two bottles of water. I chugged the first one, the small of my back settled against the sharp edge of the counter, and then nursed the second while pretending to people watch. Isabela was beside me, but she'd drifted into a conversation in the opposite direction. She was the last person anyone would think of as a babysitter, but she'd anointed herself that position when she realized she was one of the few I could stand, or as others might say, she was the only one who could handle me.

The meaning of that was lost on me.

Instead of thinking through the possibilities, I relinquished any obligation to socialize and felt my resting face take over. Eyebrow arched and lips downturned, it was something Isabela loved to point out for the sake of pointing it out. Always angry, always unapproachable, always sweeping the constellations in an attempt to avoid everything but the most necessary human interaction. It was by natural design that I'd acquired the acquaintances I had, which were far and few in between.

"Hawke's not coming," I said.

Isabela turned toward me, surprised.

"He's working tonight, but the pub closes soon."

"He's not working. He's with Anders' club."

She blinked and parted her lips in realization.

"Hawke's always on your mind, isn't he?"

"I'm that transparent?"

"Oh, sweetheart," she softly said and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, "is transparent  _really_  the word for what you are?"

"It's embarrassing."

"Watching you two is embarrassing for  _everyone_."

The front door suddenly burst open and a chorus yelled Hawke's name, cheering and clapping in tow. I'd eaten my words many times before, but that was a record. Isabela glanced my way, mockingly danced the first forward and back steps to the salsa and reminded me to swish the rest of the vomit chunks out of my mouth before talking to him.

"When was the last time you got laid?" she asked.

I reached for the nearest bottle of vodka and used it like mouthwash. The whipped cream flavoring surprised me, but I projectile spat it into the sink and righted myself.

Hawke entered in that lurid way he always did. Our eyes met as hands gripped his biceps in wayward greetings, and he shifted out of the touches as he strode toward the both of us. Isabela winked at him and removed herself from the situation with a quick sip of her drink. Hawke watched her walk away from us, and I knew he was contemplating her beauty. This was to be expected, though. Isabela was the definition of beautiful, a white man's  _exotic_.

"Pretty Boy," Hawke said to me, and I was punished by a nostalgic flutter.

"Don't use pet names to sway me," I said and slurred every 's.'

Hawke laughed but cleared his throat.

"Punishing me, I see," he said. "When did you start drinking?"

"When're you going to get a watch?" I tilted my whole body but paused when I realized what I'd said. Suddenly, I cleared my throat, believing that would sober me up. "Noon."

"How are you  _still_ standing?"

"It's a talent."

"I take it you're not sober enough to discuss earlier, then?"

" _No_."

He didn't stop me when I stepped up to him and pressed my forehead against his brick wall for a chest. Instead, he chuckled again, and I could smell the cheap beer on his breath. I wasn't the only one who'd been drinking.

"You smell like a bar," I muttered. "I just threw up on Merrill's jacket. It was from the balcony and you could hear the splats one after another. It rained."

"Is your mouth safe?"

"I just rinsed it out with vodka."

"Chunks gone?"

I licked around my teeth and nodded.

"Clean."

Hawke took a step back and caught my chin with his thumb and forefinger. He leaned forward (and down) before dragging his thumb along my bottom lip and pressing his mouth to mine. I inhaled hard and stepped toward him, my fingers reaching up to push through his purposefully disheveled hair. Thick arms looped around my waist and his palms spread like defensive spiders along either side of my ribcage. Hawke pulled me close, I didn't resist, and it was me who opened my mouth first, not realizing how much I'd longed for his attention until he weakly groaned against my teeth.

I'd missed the sound.

I'd missed  _him_.

He kissed a path to the top of my left cheekbone and murmured, "You haven't shown me your bedroom yet."

"Varric's in there."

"Then we'll do it on top of him."

"You're determined," I sighed, "but so am I."

Hawke clasped onto my wrist and stumbled past people, shifting through dwarfed friends and strangers until he reached the stairs. He managed to ascend them without tripping, and he was surprisingly mindful about dragging me along behind him. I greeted his assessing looks with reassuring shoves forward and chuckled when he almost fell forward in the upstairs hallway. Hawke caught himself on a doorframe and then fumbled with my bedroom door handle.

"God, you can hear Varric's snoring in the hallway."

"Isabela said I could use her bed.  _We_  could."

"That's in poor taste," he said and managed to push the door open. He flicked on the light and then started to rapidly turn it on and off. "Even for me, that is."

Varric greeted us with a grunt from the bed, and Hawke laughed when he raised a hand in acknowledgement to let us know he was awake.

"Fenris wants his bed back," Hawke said, "but Isabela's bed is empty."

"Her bed's better anyway," Varric muttered and rolled off the low mattress. He managed to regain his balance and stumbled past us with a dismissive wave. "I'm getting too old for these shit parties. I file my own taxes and own a business. Most people our age have a wife and kids. Not that anyone in their right fucking mind would want that, but it makes sense when your joints start going out. I've poisoned my body more than enough for one lifetime…"

He was still talking to himself when he departed down the hallway.

Hawke grinned at me once we were officially alone, suddenly arrogant.

"Don't look at me like that."

I shut the door behind us and locked it.

He reached for my shoulder and pushed me against the door, and I didn't think to resist when he initiated another kiss. His lips rolled against mine with appreciative hums, tongue then traipsing along mine with indolent licks, and I pushed open palms along his chest before shoving the red and black flannel off his broad shoulders. This was his cue to reach for the hem of my hooded sweatshirt, and once it was over my head and forgotten on the floor, I walked him back toward the mattress, the rumbled nest coaxing us closer with its warm allure.

"Eager?" he asked and caught the side of my face, determined not to stop kissing.

"You're good at inspiring the feeling," I said and encouraged him to tug off his white t-shirt. It was soon lost to my bedroom's mess. Our mouths met again. "Are you  _not_?"

Hawke chuckled, and the laugh vibrated against my lips. He unexpectedly grabbed the underneath of my thighs and hoisted me up, slinging my legs around his hips and then turning us so that he could drop me onto my mattress with a bouncing plop. I combed my fingers through my hair upon landing, suddenly panting hard while gazing up at him, even though we'd only kissed.

"What a sight."

My legs hung off the mattress, and he determinedly kneeled between them. Hawke kissed the inside of my right knee and pushed his mouth toward my inner-thigh with a wistful sigh, pulling at my leggings with teeth and rolling lips until wet patches appeared. There was already a blotch between my thighs when he reached the spot, and my lips parted in surprise when he dragged his broad tongue along concealed folds, pointedly pressing his tongue against my covered clit.

I shifted my hips  _hard_ , legs draping over his shoulders, fingers reaching for his hair.

"Tell me you want this," he breathed and licked again.

"You know I want this."

"Tell me, love."

He licked faster, only pausing to suck the spot in a brutalizing taunt.

" _Hawke_  – " I closed my eyes and reached for my waistband to start shoving the leggings down. Eyes on the ceiling with a rapidly rising and falling chest, Hawke helped me tug them to my knees, but he didn't move forward. He was waiting for me to say it. "I want you to fuck me.  _God_ , fuck me. I wanted it this morning, but then  _Anders_ …"

He yanked my leggings off all the way before I could finish the thought.

Hawke's mouth found my cunt, and he determinedly dragged his broad tongue along the outer-folds before parting my vulva and pressing the tip into my entrance with determined stabs. He wrapped his arms around my thighs and softly muttered, 'oh,  _shit_ ,' when my hips gyrated in an attempt to fuck his face. He laughed and did his best to hold my working hips still, but I was pulsating, aching to be flipped around and ravaged on all fours with his hot breath fanning out on the back of my neck. There was no keeping me stationary.

" _Mn_ ," he hummed and sucked on my inner-labia, pulling off the velvet skin with wet pops. I closed my eyes and shivered, drunkenly wondering if I should let him marry me already, drunkenly admiring the vertigo and how much I loved him. "Motherfucker, no one else tastes this good, Fenris. You've ruined me for everyone else. I'm fucking _wrecked_  for you…"

His tongue trailed up to my clit, the nub swollen beneath the hood he quickly pushed back with his thumb. Wordlessly, I cried out as his tongue strummed the nerves in a disciplined thrum. The only kind of break he took was to suck, swallowing whatever wetness pooled onto his gently laving tongue, but it wasn't until his fingers brushed along my entrance did I think to speak.

"Fuck me," I whispered, never pleading, always demanding. "Hawke, fuck me."

He pushed two fingers inside without halting his tongue, and the pleasurable stretch was immediate. I was wet, opened up by excitement, and I flattened my palms against the nearest wall behind my head as Hawke ruthlessly finger-fucked me. Thrilled cries bubbled up the back of my throat, filling the room in time with his wet pounding.

He added a third finger, my knees jerked back, and I groaned loud enough for the hallway to hear when he hooked me over and over and over. He'd trapped me on his fingers, and I was willingly at his mercy.

"You're tightening up," he murmured, words hot against my skin.

I quivered and whispered, "It could be you inside."

"What if I just want to watch you come?"

Dewy walls began to spasm at the suggestion.

I propped myself up on an elbow in time to watch Hawke smugly smile, but he suddenly retracted his fingers. It left me feeling cold and suddenly exposed, but I dropped my legs from his shoulders to lean forward and kiss him fully on the mouth, my fingers swiping his beard dry. He grabbed my thighs and slid his hands beneath me to feel my ass with a pointed squeeze.

Hawke laughed in spite of my arched eyebrow and kissed my cheek.

My shaking hands reached for his belt and began to quickly undo it. He whistled in response, and I wondered if he'd still want to fuck me if I head butted him. Deciding against the odds, I opened the front of his jeans and pushed them down with practiced hands.

"Feeling that dry spell, Fenris?"

"I'll get  _dry_  if you make a joke out of this."

"Loud and clear."

He kicked off the denim and black briefs, allowing his cock to spring free. It was startlingly thick, more than long enough, and crowned with a patch of trimmed black hair that created a path toward his sprawling chest hair. Envy washed over me almost immediately, but his penchant for worshipping my every move deviated any frustration. As much as I wanted what he had, I wanted  _him_ , and he'd made it clear to me more than once that I was enough as is. While that didn't solve any actual problems, it did soften the harder blows to my self-esteem.

"Spread 'em," he joked, pushing over my knees and lightly patting my suddenly exposed ass. Had he smacked it, then he would've found himself bloodied on the floor.

"Missionary?" I asked. "That's vanilla."

"As God intended," Hawke said, and he helped me out of my tank top. "Unless you feel like presenting yourself to the Lord."

I unattractively flopped open my legs and propped my cheek up on a palm.

"That's  _not_  what I meant."

My unexpected smile dredged a soft ' _oh_ ' from Hawke, as if I'd intended for it to come across as sultry.

He reached up to turn off the light via the ceiling fan and finished clamoring onto the bed with only the dim bedside lamp guiding his way. The new mattress was silent, a virgin to zealous creaking. I coaxed him closer with a gentle tug of his bicep, pulling him over me, impatient as ever.

"It's been too long," he crooned against my mouth.

"But I think about it constantly."

Hawke lined his cockhead up with my center, but he paused to brush it through pudgy folds and drum it against my clit. I gasped and flitted my gaze to his eyes. He was watching me, not intensely, but with careful consideration for what I was feeling. Normally, I would've sucked him off, stroked him until he begged me to ride him sore. It always ended with him slick with sweat and my thighs burning, but it'd been too long since our last time to ask that of me.

We weren't as familiar as we'd once been.

Hawke and I were no longer lovers.

When he pushed inside with that soft, yet familiar,  _pop_  – we simultaneously exhaled fervent groans, as if he'd knocked the air out of us both. His thrusts started out shallow, cautious even. The sensation was enough to inspire a low building heat that licked along the back of my cunt like pulsating fire. Hawke entered easily, but the stretching was immense, that thick penetration more than enough to cause my breathing to hitch and dissolve into little cries.

I relished in how our thighs met when he hilted me with one languid thrust, and the fullness caused me to trail my fingers up to my own lips. Hawke shooed my hand away and replaced my fingers with his own, pushing them along my tongue as I tilted my head back in satisfaction and held his wrist. My tongue traced between the two digits, and I enjoyed the taste of skin's salt and traces of spilt beer. I sucked hard only to create vacuum around his knuckles, and he changed the rhythm of his hips, in response.

The spearing was all at once assertive, and Hawke felt needy on top of me with his unabashed gasps and death grip on the sheets beside my head. He leaned in close, forcing my thighs back even farther, and then hid his face in my throat. The position inspired me to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss at his shoulder with tender nips and a soft nuzzle into his jaw.

"Fuck,  _Fenris_ …"

I shoved my hips against his to meet him halfway, and I savored the way he muttered my name over and over like a prayer. The undiluted adoration on Hawke's part was what caused my clit to surge, the bud swollen and flushed a bright pink that I couldn't resist to touch. I reached down and started to massage it with encircling fingers, thighs tensing and hips swirling as the head of his cock started to grind against that spot nestled inside.

"F-fuck," I managed and then knew he was about to rip the much-needed orgasm directly out of me. "Hawke,  _Hawke_ …"

"Come for me," he huskily whispered in my ear, dragging a finger along its shell and sucking on the lobe. "It's okay to feel this way with me. I love making you feel good."

"I love it when you fuck me." I maybe whimpered. It maybe was the alcohol doing the talking for me. " _Harder_. Fuck me harder."

He did as I asked and then leaned down to whisper in my ear, "Show me how much you love it, Fenris."

As if on command, the power-driven climax rippled from my core like a rock dropped into a still pond, suddenly seizing every muscle inside me and causing me to tense while crying out Hawke and God's name alike. I clenched tight around him, pointedly attempting to milk what I could of him dry. My cunt's walls desperately contracted again and again until it occurred to me that I'd dug my nails clean into his shoulders' flesh. Left behind were crescent indentions and soft plumes of pinkish blood I tried collecting with the pads of my fingers.

The scratches didn't stop Hawke, though.

His drunken state made finishing hardly an issue. Instead he rushed into me, driving my hips deep into the mattress with hard bounds that forced the mattress to groan. The pressure built from having my relaxing orgasm tormented by a continuing fuck left me over stimulated, but he was the one making the racket, moaning in spite of himself and drinking me in over and over.

"Goddamn,  _nh_!"

Hawke's guttural yell and erratic thrusting signaled his end.

"Hawke," I whispered his name one last time when the rush of cum emptied out inside of me in a hot torrent I hadn't realized I needed. "Fucking fill me all night.  _Please_. Just like that…"

I covered my eyes with my arms as I attempted to catch my breath. Raspy breathing lingered between us as we basked in the surprising afterglow of one another. My fingers were numb, my toes wouldn't move.

"Hey," he said after several seconds, soothing me with his warm tenor, "look at me, Pretty Boy."

When I made no move to look at him, he took my chin in his hand and faintly kissed me, which I wholeheartedly allowed. Hawke then removed my arms from my face and kissed along the bridge of my nose, over both of my eyebrows and then returned to my lips with a small hum. He hadn't pulled back his hips yet, but I could feel him softening inside and the mess of his cum and my fluids beginning to leak out onto the fresh sheets.

"We could go again in a bit," I suggested, but it came out sleepy, "or in the morning."

Hawke finally pulled out, garnering a satisfied gasp from me, and collapsed on his side. He curved his body around mine and found a way to comfortably gather me up in his arms. The bass from Isabela's music became noticeable in our post-euphoria, but I was tired enough not to mind. Not when I'd so successfully allowed myself to have something I'd wanted for too long.

"You're a strumpet," Hawke whispered in my ear, teasing. "A straight floozy."

I smiled to myself and reached over as if to hit him, but he caught my wrist and kissed my knuckles.

"I'm going to miss you," he mumbled against my hand after a silent spell. "I'm going to miss you so damn much."

With a start, it then occurred to me that this was the beginning of his extended goodbye.


	6. Tally Ho

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Substance 1987 is one of my favorite albums, but also! I'm having so much fun with this story, and it's the first time I can say I'm absolutely in love with Anders' character.

There comes a time in life when you have to admit you're a self-loathing fuck.

Self-awareness is key.

How one stumbles upon this realization is usually in an unsavory stint of life, such as after calling into work two days in a row with a cold that's actually a self-deprecating masturbation session, sans lube. The melodrama is poignant in the way that one also tends to provide his own theme music.  _Really_  - there's something about the Misfits'  _Saturday Night_  blaring in a warping loop that engages the tear ducts.

Homicidal romance.

Who would've thought?

The point being, it's important to acknowledge when you're being too much, but what matters is what you decide to do with the information. If you're me, then you do  _nothing_  with it. In fact you do so much nothing with the information you begin sustaining on instant mashed potatoes and water. It's the mush factor that makes it important, appropriately depressing. The sticky texture that takes no effort whatsoever to chew, yet threatens to cement your mouth shut forever, which probably needs to happen when you reach that kind of bottom-feeding low.

I'd slept with Hawke again, goddammit.

And I'd  _loved_  it.

Fuck me, literally.

There's this escalation factor to Hawke and me that's undeniable. The signs are clear, and like always, I saw the red but drove through the light.

I even let him bust a nut inside me, which would've been excellent had I still been on birth control. The trip to the pharmacy for Plan B was invigorating in that 'time to cross the River Styx' way, especially when hindsight set in. I'd even let him do it again the next morning, entirely sober and on top of him with his hands desperately holding my hips while I fucked him stupid. It'd been a barely lucid power trip, but I wasn't dense enough to consider it a warranted consolation prize, considering everything I'd been through.

It's safe to say I'm on birth control again.

This opened a revolting vault for me, mainly because I'd found temporary peace with my body since the end of sophomore year. Being busy didn't give me time to overthink my biology in relation to my gender, but with school suddenly a nonissue and a mundane routine established, there was wiggle room to endeavor more existentialism. Up until this point, Hawke had made me comfortable in extension of is inability to care about my physical technicalities, but Hawke wasn't forever. If it were anyone else would I feel the same about how I was touched, loved?

That question was why I couldn't get out of bed.

"Tell me this isn't because you got laid."

Unbeknownst to me, Anders had been standing in my doorway.

Startled, I snapped my gaze to him with a habitually revolted stare he quickly scoffed at.

Why I hadn't noticed him was partly due to how I was hypnotized by my television's lull. It was muted, but there was something about the colors of a game show.

"Why are you here?"

"To watch the shit show."

"Get _out_  of my house."

I shifted onto my side to face Anders, cheek propped up in my palm.

He looked dingier than usual, like festering dishwater. Strung out would've been kind, and I wondered how long he'd been on a binger. There was no telling. Everyone was different. I never paid attention to him beyond his biting dialogues and terrible taste in music, anyway. While I liked to believe I hated him with substance, sometimes it was mostly because he heralded Minor Threat as music.

"He thinks you're going to quit," Anders said, casually stepping into my room. My gaze shot toward his boots, dirtying my crumby carpet. "Have you checked your phone at all in the past twenty-four hours? You might want to. He's been melting down for hours."

This prompted me to my feet. I kept my distance from Anders because he was larger than I, and large men like him set my nerves off. My phone had been aimlessly plugged up since I'd called into work, entirely lost to the void of my indifference. It was why, when I pressed the home button and the screen revealed a stream of unattended text messages, I paused in disdain.

_Merrill can't cover your shift._

_Fenris, if you stop talking to me because you wanted it…_

_Was it that bad?_

_Why do you always do this?_

_Whatever. I don't care anymore._

_I don't want this anymore._

"I'll never understand why he worries about someone as selfish as you."

The front door opened downstairs with a traveling  _whip_ , and Isabela called out Hawke's name. He didn't answer and bounded up the steps, but whatever momentum he'd gained came to a halt as soon as he appeared in my doorway and spotted Anders standing beside me. The sight must've been as confusing for him as the situation was for me, maybe even a little condemning.

"Get out," Hawke snapped at Anders, pointing at him and then pointing toward the hallway, breathing hard. His face was red. "Anders, get  _out_."

Anders raised both hands as if under arrest, a gesture he knew too well, and strode out and down the stairs. I could hear Isabela asking him what was going on, but before Anders' snarky response could register, Hawke stepped inside and slammed my door shut. He immediately began pacing, fingers pushing through his hair and breathing thick.

"Are you trying to prove a point?" I asked, hollow as I lifted my phone to him. "I only now saw your text messages. Is this because I didn't reply fast enough?"

" _No_ ," he snapped, sharp enough to make me flinch, "it's because I'm sick of this, and I'm sick of whatever you're doing here. I don't know  _what_  you're fucking doing here anymore, Fenris. You can't just fuck me and then dip out after everything we've dealt with."

"Get bent," I said before I could stop myself. "Do you think I live here just for you? Do you think my entire existence revolves around  _trying_  to make you miserable? You need to chill out – "

"Sometimes you're really good at making it seem that way. Nothing is good enough for you. You're perpetually unsatisfied with  _everything_  I do for you,  _everything_  I try to be for you, and God knows all I do is  _try_. Fenris, you have to tell me. Will I  _ever_  be good enough for you?"

"Jesus, like it's a matter of  _you_  not being good enough."

He turned his back to me as soon as I said that and suppressed a scream at the wall.

"We've been doing this for fucking  _years_ , Fenris.  _Years_..."

Hawke's desperation hinged on that final word, and it was what got my attention. This wasn't one of our normal fights that'd diffuse the next time I walked into the Hanged Man.

"Hawke," I started and slowly walked toward him, "this isn't about you."

"I don't have another three years to waste, Fenris. I want my life back."

"I'm not asking you to wait three more years," I said quickly, feeling my own desperation starting to climb my throat. "I need more time to settle on this. I can't just will myself to be happy. I'm trying to let myself be happy, and it takes time to figure out after every – "

"I could've made you happy!" he suddenly yelled, interrupting me again as he turned back around. "I wanted to buy you a house. I wanted a _life_  with you. This was supposed to  _be_  something. You said so yourself you wanted more than Danarius and Lowtown, but instead you keep fucking him, and you keep taking his money, and you keep letting him pay the insurance on a stupid fucking Mercedes that isn't even that cool. It's a conformist rich person car. You could've at least gotten a BMW and not some shitty sugar baby car out of the deal, but instead you fuck me and pretend that I don't  _ache_  over this, too."

I scoffed at the car commentary, but decided not to address it.

"I wasn't ready!"

"You'll clearly  _never_  be ready, Fenris!" He started smacking his chest, right where his heart sat. "What _is_ this to you? What am I to you?"

"You're almost thirty!" I could feel my voice aching from the escalated screaming match. "Of course you're determined to settle into a house! That's what people at your age do! I'm not ready to marry you and have your fucking babies! I don't even know what I  _am_ , Hawke! You're everything, but that doesn't matter! It doesn't matter when I can't even help myself!"

"You have more life experience than even I do! I'm not asking you to have my bastards. That's sick considering you're -  _Christ_ , I just want to give you a breather.  _Why_ aren't you tired yet? How aren't you exhausted by not just Danarius but  _us_?"

As much as I wanted to keep yelling, my throat suddenly closed up.

"I  _am_  tired, Hawke. I'm  _very_  fucking tired."

"Then at least try to act like," he pleaded through his aggravation. "Tell me something,  _anything_."

"You wouldn't love me anymore if I did!"

This wasn't because I'd called into work. Hawke had been waiting on me for years, at this point. We'd been back and forth for years, and he was tired of me.

"Don't," he said, panicked and guilt-stricken when he noticed my gritted teeth and glassy eyes, "don't cry, Fenris."

His voice was all at once softer, swelling with concern.

"I am  _not_."

The defiance in my voice was weakened when I blinked and tried to swipe the first tear away, but Hawke beat me to it, large fingers catching the oncoming streams.

"Babe – "

"Don't  _babe_  me after screaming at me."

Hawke reached for my arm, but I shoved at his chest; once, twice, thrice. Each push was harder than the last, but he didn't back down and waited, knowing what came next.

My arms looped around his neck, and I flatly pressed my forehead against his warm, solid chest, unbothered when he pushed a set of fingers into my messy hair and held me close.

"I need to leave," I whispered, noting his familiar cologne. "Get me the fuck out of here. Get me out of my life. I don't want to do this anymore, Hawke."

"We could go to Ireland tomorrow."

"I don't know if that'd be long enough."

Hawke pressed his mouth against my temple and softly sighed, both of us all at once decompressing.

"But it's better than nothing."

"I'm too poor for that kind of impromptu trip."

"You're wearing a pair of thousand dollar boots."

"I didn't buy these," I muttered, defiant.

"No," he agreed and buried his face into my neck, "no you didn't."

Hawke affectionately kissed the spot beneath my earlobe over and over again, the sensation of his lips and beard tickling me.

"Spoiled," Hawke whispered in between pecks, "spoiled, spoiled, spoiled…"

We stood there like that for a long time, embracing and not saying anything when we needed to be talking more than ever.

"Do you feel better?" I asked and dropped my arms from his neck to encircle them around his waist. "Your face is still hot."

"I'm sorry," he suddenly confessed and his voice sounded strange, dense. "I don't know how to help you anymore."

It was my turn for my voice to thicken, break. 

"It's fine, Hawke," I promised, even if it felt like a lie. "I've known for a very long time that I need to help myself."

Hawke didn't have to work that afternoon, so I prompted him to shower with me as some meager attempt to pretend that were still us. The most eventful part of the shower was when he repeatedly smacked my ass like bongos because he'd discovered the wet sound echoed. He'd never been one for mood lighting, and it came off in his actions. Fortunately for him, I was feeling too bad about everything that I was to find him genuinely annoying. 

" _Must_  you?"

_Smack. Smack. Smack._

"I'm not in the mood right now."

_Smack. Smack. Smack._

"You're going to make me step out of here without rinsing."

_Smack. Smack. Smack._

Not wanting a scummy scalp, I decided to fight back and reached to slap Hawke's ass without the same playful inflection, but when I did he only hissed in satisfaction.

"Do it again, Fenris."

"And this is why we don't shower together."

After washing away what we could of the spontaneous fight, Hawke made a nest with me in my bed and bought plane tickets to Ireland for next week. I agreed to come into work the next day, since the cold I'd been fighting was clearly a nonissue, and he seemed to be soothed by the faux normalcy. He even made me dinner, charmed me until I made out with him with his fingers thrusting between my legs, and I almost, almost told him I loved him. It wouldn't have been a lie. 

> _He spent the night with me again, and I never knew having someone suck you off could be as intimate, as full of those unspoken three words. I didn’t want him to, not after the fight we’d had that was again my fault, but he’d insisted, almost begged. He told me it's as much of a part of his language as me confessing my feelings to him every other Sunday is, but it comes across as hollow, degrading, when he puts it that way. Poor kid, poor fucking kid._
> 
> _I pulled him off as soon as I was finished and asked him to move in with me, but he laughed in my face. Pretty Boy never laughs in the moments I want him to. Always when he needs to punctuate on a sardonic moment, never when he’s happy. I’d do a lot to make him as happy as he makes me, but there’s something there that's entirely bridled. He walks around like there are hands around his throat, but I’m beginning to think they’re his own and not that bastard he can't seem to get past. I hate the motherfucker. No one, not even Pretty Boy, seems to get how much I hate him._
> 
> _If he’d give me an inch, then I’d tell him everything. I would. But what's the point in opening up to a kid like him? He'd take it as an attack, not an invitation._

Hawke left early the next morning for some unspoken reason, and I didn't seem again until my shift.

"Are you going to borrow money from your boss again?"

"That'll hardly be necessary with the likes of you."

Anders cracked his deck of cards against the bar's edge and shuffled them with astute fingers, thumbing through sticky cards that were well-loved.

"Don't look so self-satisfied," he muttered. "We haven't even started to play."

Mid-afternoon in the Hanged Man made for little to do. This explained why I was gouging my free time in the throat with Anders situated across from me at the bar. Mutual boredom was the most we ever had in common, but sometimes that was just enough.

"I expected you to ask more questions," he said, always attempting to dredge cream to the surface, "but you've been uncharacteristically quiet."

"I'm plenty quiet," I said and watched him deal out the cards. His shirt was a Black Flag shirt. I hated Black Flag. "You're the one who convinces yourself otherwise."

"So you say."

"So I  _know_ ," I countered but then cleared my throat, "but if you must know why I'm not agonizing over the details of your CERCLE meeting, then it should be said I have no interest in associating myself with a band of drug dealers. You're all the same, whether or not you want to believe you're in the same vein of garbage is a coping mechanism in itself."

"And yet you follow one around like a trained dog."

For that – I dragged his beer back to me and started to chug it.

He was drinking garbage Tally Ho. 

Hawke appeared behind me and very gently caught the end of the glass, holding it in place and helping me down the final gulps with encouraging tilts.

"Where were you?" Anders asked. "I didn't hear you come in."

"I was at mass," he admitted without anything but conviction. "I had one of those mornings where I woke up and  _really_  needed God."

I finished the beer and Hawke set the glass aside, then pouring Anders another drink and pushing it toward him with an apologetic smile. Whether or not it was sincere was up for debate.

Hawke offered to order a pizza for when I went on break, but two men I recognized as Anders' friends burst through the Hanged Man's double doors, out of breath. Hawke's shoulders spiked in annoyance when they nearly knocked over a customer, looking out of place in their studded jackets and shaved heads, but he didn't say anything because they were a part of CERCLE.

"Anders, have you seen Karl?"

"Not today," Anders said and turned in his seat. "Why? Did you get caught  _again_? He's not always going to be there to cover your ass. It's for safety reasons he's no longer a part of CERCLE and about to leave Kirkwall. Everyone still needing him so much is being counterintuitive at this point."

" _Anders_  – they pulled a body out of the docks this morning, and everyone's saying it's Karl. No one's been to the morgue yet, because we've been looking for  _you_."

"What do you mean they think it's Karl's? We just saw him two days ago. He called me last night."

"It's bad," the ugliest of the pair promised, "CERCLE's up in arms looking for all of its members."

Hawke didn't need to hear anymore.

"Let's go to the hospital," he said as he reached for his jacket and tossed me the keys. "Fenris, watch the place. Varric will be by sooner than later, and as soon as you see him, tell him what's going on. Don't let anymore customers come inside after these kids. We're closing up shop early today, and  _don't_ go outside. Stay in my apartment until I get back."

"I can handle myself," I began, ready to argue, but Hawke grabbed both sides of my face and kept me still. "Don't look at me like that."

"Stay here," he insisted with an intense burn in his stare, "for me."

Hawke winked at me and freed my face.

He rounded the bar and reached for a shocked Anders' shoulder, squeezing through the sharp spikes along his arm and guiding him out of the pub and onto the street with the other two leather jackets in tow. The Hanged Man developed a sudden grey-scale that must've leaked into the moods of the customers because they soon closed their tabs and left.

Karl Thekla was a name everyone in Lowtown knew, but a face I'd only seen in passing a handful of times. This was mostly due to my inability to give two shits about CERCLE, which he started alongside Anders years ago.

The pair had gone to university together, dropped out together to pursue CERCLE as a full-time endeavor, and it was no mystery they'd once been lovers. Thoughts of losing an ex-partner gave me twinges of sympathy for Anders, which might've bothered me had I not understood feeling any other way would've made me less of a human being.

Varric showed up hours later with the pizza Hawke had promised me earlier that day. I was upstairs, half-asleep on his massive mutt and watching his basic cable in a tired lull.

No text messages, no calls. I had no idea what was going on.

"They had an emergency CERCLE meeting," Varric explained as he opened the box. "It _was_  Karl, the Poor Bastard. No one deserves to go down like that."

He handed me a slice of pizza.

"Have you heard from Isabela?" I asked and took a bite, tossing a hunk of Italian sausage at Pig. "She's not returning my calls, and her phone's been shut off since this afternoon."

"Hawke told her to keep her phone off, and last I heard she packed a bag and hopped onto one of her daddy's boats. We won't see her for a while. Hawke insisted she lay low."

"She's not a part of CERCLE."

"She has just as many connections."

"When are they coming back?"

"Hawke must be coming back soon if he asked for me to buy pizza."

Varric grabbed a bottled beer from the fridge, even though the downstairs was full of better quality brew. He handed me one, and I leaned over the counter only to impatiently watch the clock. Being left out wasn't something I typically minded, but there was quiet panic everywhere. Being in the know would've alleviated the building apprehension behind my sternum. Something about this situation was more sinister than the average Lowtown kill.

"There he is," Varric said when the apartment's downstairs door opened, Hawke then bounding up the stairs in his typical lumbering fashion, "and he's alone."

Hawke appeared on the landing, already half-shrugged out of his coat, and he shot me a relieved gaze. He strode toward me and kissed my forehead before taking the beer from my hands and downing most of it on spot. I watched him, feigning annoyance.

"It was Karl?" I asked, wanting to hear it from Hawke's mouth.

"There's no denying that was Karl," he said, not obviously shaken but disturbed enough for me to read the minute signs. He was fidgeting, amber eyes darting. "A bullet right between the eyes. I've never seen Anders like that before, but I can't blame the man. Karl and he – you know – fucked a lot."

He took a bite of my pizza slice, ignoring the entire pizza laid before him.

"Is Isabela gone?" Hawke asked Varric who quickly nodded with a confirming grunt. "I've already changed the flights around, so we'll be gone by dawn as long as we haul ass."

"Wait," I started, wondering whom he meant. "Varric and you are  _going_?"

"Wrong," Varric answered for Hawke. " _You_  and Hawke are going. I've got family in all the right places. No one's going to be finding me anytime soon."

"Isn't that suspicious?" I asked. "Everyone disappearing is obvious."

"We're not trying to pretend we're not doing anything," Hawke said as he strode into his room to grab his luggage out from beneath the bed. "The Chantry already knows what we're up to. They've known forever how we run Lowtown, but whoever's now running the Chantry suddenly decided they have a backbone. What we're doing is making it harder on them to track everyone down while Karl's death blows over. Scattering is the best option, even if it's only for a week or two. The only person lingering behind is Anders, and that's because of the funeral. He won't miss it. I begged him to go, but he won't budge."

"What time is our flight?"

"We've got three hours."

"You realize I'm fine," I reassured him and followed Hawke into the bedroom. I pressed by shoulder against the doorframe and watched him throw sweater on top of sweater into the suitcase. "I'm not the one involved with CERCLE, and I have no connections like Isabela."

"Your ex is one of the biggest drug dealers in Thedas," Varric interjected. "Danarius makes us look like chump change in comparison. If I Google your name, then pictures of you show up alongside article after article of denied claims and allegations. You're worse off than Isabela is in this situation; so don't try to ass yourself. This looks bad on you, too."

I looked over my shoulder in disgust.

"You Google searched me?"

"What can I say, Fenris?" Varric shrugged, pleased with himself. "I like to know everyone's story."

" _Anyway_  – " Hawke snapped, hating it whenever someone else candidly associated me with Danarius and what we'd both started referring to as the Past Life, "we need to get going."

"I'm sure it's a hard to think back on for everyone," Varric continued as he reached for Pig's leash. "Someone forgot to tell Fenris Dior wasn't the designer for him, and now there are pictures all over the Internet as a constant reminder."

Hawke cut him a look from the floor, and Varric chuckled before disappearing with the dog. Apparently, he'd agreed to drop Pig off at the kennel.

We packed in a hurry, something I'd grown accomplished at long before Hawke. Danarius had a penchant for spur-of-the-moment international trips, which had forced me to know exactly what to bring and keep travel packs stuffed beneath my bed. I had a couple leftover from that era of my life, and was able to dredge one from my closet, giving us more time to get to the airport.

"I can drive us."

"I'd rather walk," Hawke said without abandon.

The two of us were paused in front of my townhouse, glancing down at our wristwatches while standing before the garaged Mercedes Hawke hated more than life itself.

"That's ten fucking miles, Hawke."

"Ten miles I'd rather not be subjected to Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode."

I stared at him.

"Then I'm not going to Ireland."

"Fenris, don't be petty."

"Says the man who won't ride in my luxury vehicle because he doesn't like my music."

Hawke let that digest and walked to my car, knowing he was beat.

"Fine. We'll take your car, but  _I'm_  in charge of the music."

I rolled my eyes as I trailed after him and popped the trunk with my remote. 

"Remind me to gird my loins."

Five minutes into the ride I'd retrieved my iPhone from his fingers and started scrolling through my iTunes, mowing down the interstate while completely ignoring the road before me.

"Stop complaining," I snapped and jerked the phone out of his reach. "New Order is a  _great_ band."


	7. Communion

Seven hours on a flight with Garrett Hawke makes for plenty of much needed  _interpersonal communication_ , as Isabela would say. While I could've spent the entirety of our flight listening to the Smith's  _I know It's Over_  and lamenting the countdown to Hawke's new life, Hawke was hell bent on playing with my hands and discussing Dublin from the nearby coastline to the economic crash and on into the tourist hubs he refused to saturate me in. His excitement was tangible, and he didn't even blink during the eventual turbulence. Instead, Hawke kept talking, and I couldn't stop listening. Whenever he talked about himself or what he loved I considered it an event that deserved my undivided attention, and Hawke  _loved_  Ireland.

"The Hanged Man is going to look like a joke compared to the places I'll be taking you," Hawke said while thumbing through my appropriately snagged copy of  _Dubliners_. He wrinkled his forehead and then glanced at me, uncertain. The book snapped shut with a dead clap. "Bringing the English major to Ireland suddenly seems like an error on my part. Are we going to lie on Yeats' grave?"

"Only for a minute."

"Love, I hate to break it to you, but you're a fucking snore."

"Don't start," I murmured and snagged the book from his hands, "or I'll start reading out loud again. None of us, including this entire flight, wants that."

"But the way you read Joyce swells my 'nads."

"I'd rather swell them other ways," I said, flat.

Not as charmed as he wanted me to be, Hawke nudged my side until I smiled, but he didn't get any other response beyond that. After several minutes of attempting to read, I dropped my cheek onto Hawke's shoulder, and closed my eyes with a furrowed brow. He reached for my wrist and turned it upward before he laced our fingers.

"Do you still have family in Ireland?"

"Some," I heard the eye roll in his voice, "but we're not chummy."

"But are we going to visit them while we're there? You haven't been back in years."

Hawke's fingers dragged up my arm and then pushed a piece of hair behind my ear.

"Doubt it. There's no real reason, and anyway, I'm not the most sentimental one of the bunch."

"Did you ever think something like this would happen?" I asked, slowly reopening my eyes to glance out the darkened window. "That you'd be lying low because of the things you've done?"

He chuckled and then opened his mouth to say plenty of things, but he stopped himself.

"Never, actually. I had low expectations of myself until recently."

"I've been doing this since I was sixteen. Don't overthink it. That's where you mess up."

"Then  _you're_  the tour guide on this trip."

Hawke made me smile, but that was just it.

_He made me smile._

Even when we were in a burning house, he was holding onto my happiness through the smoke. I depended on whatever he could give me to find my center, to escape from the curling wallpaper and condemned structure. Hawke was so much bigger than I could ever be, and he pushed harder, wanted more. He believed in the world while I was always screaming at it, begging for it to remediate how it'd stripped me down to bone, charred me beyond muscle and skin. But the bone remembered, the bones always remembered, and he was what I remembered being.

It was noon when we arrived in Dublin.

Hawke's hand never left my elbow as we pushed through the crowd toward the baggage claim. It wasn't so much a dominance hold but protective uncertainty.

"It's different here," he explained. "Take my word for it."

He'd booked a motel room last second. I'd watched him while I packed, his credit card out and eyebrows furrowed as he mouthed the numbers to himself.  _Dublin is expensive_ , he'd explained. It was one of the many reasons his family had left after his father died. There was nothing there for them but the interior of a colonoscopy bag and debts.

"There was this inn," he started as he we headed toward the train, "and the rates were alright, but it's kind of rustic. I was feelin' kitschy in the swing of panic."

Let me define 'rustic' in Hawke's lexicon. Rustic was a place called the Hog's Slaughter directly outside of the tourist hub. After being charmed by Dublin's specks of cobblestone, the dollish archaic architecture and thick accents I'd only associated with Hawke, the allure was diluted by a swift turn of a corner. Had I not grown up in the slums, then I would've been crestfallen, but the inn's wooded front and grainy windows seemed like either a tourist's nightmare or wet dream. It entirely depended on one's sense of adventure, which I'd been forced to gain throughout my life.

"If you were a place personified…"

"What're you trying to say, Fenris?" he asked as he pushed open the creaky door.

"That your charm is singular."

Inside reminded me of the Hanged Man.

The wood paneling was outrageous, the bar top well loved and the seats maroon leather that framed the endless row of beer taps. People were leaned over the bar, chatting loudly and discussing eventual dinner with their wives and kids, and the tables were packed with people shuffling decks and sneaking smokes.

"Black stuff," Hawke said to me as we rolled our bags toward a counter. He tapped my nose. "We're not even going to unpack. We're going to eat, get a drink and do something."

The barkeeper who doubled as an innkeeper was toothy and talkative. Hawke talked back, much faster than he ever did in the states, with a foreign gust of energy. I stared at him in awe as he delved into a rapid exchange with someone he'd only just met, swinging our room's keys around his finger while explaining where we were from, the politics of our neighborhood, the pub he owned and why it was captivatingly abysmal since a pub was hardly a pub outside of the Motherland. The immediate camaraderie made me uncomfortable, and it only intensified when Hawke turned to me and referred to me as his 'mate.' This had happened in transient, but something about the tone disclosed absolutely nothing about the nature of our relationship.

"Pretty thing," was what the innkeeper said  _about_  me. "Been here long enough to form a thought?

"Hardly."

I had a feeling I wasn't passing.

Our room was a queen bedroom with a tiny adjoining bath and shallow closet. The hardwood floors were original, the furniture antiquated and furnace rattling. We had a window that barely missed facing a brick wall but overlooked a sleepy black river. The window was the first thing I stepped toward after dropping off my bag, and also the first time I realized we were an ocean away from Kirkwall, from CERCLE, and the fact I was another Lowtown dropout.

"Let's make today an event. I want to get the touristy necessities out of the way."

I cast him a look over my shoulder.

"I could've sworn you said there'd be  _none_."

"What can I say?" he asked as he changed his shirt. "You've always been my exception to the rule."

My first night in Ireland we started drinking at six in the afternoon.

Hawke told me not to try and keep up with him, but that was a challenge.

"If you vomit all over me in the bed, then I'll stick you in the hall."

" _Listen_ ," I started, kneeling on a stool beside him, keeping my balance by the Grace of God, "listen to  _me_. We need to have a conversation."

"A  _conversation_?" Hawke asked, mocking me while he reached for my hip so I didn't hit the deck. "We don't have those."

"Don't you think that's the problem?"

"My existential tadpole," Hawke began and sipped his pint, "don't upset yourself before the night even begins."

"I'm  _not_ upset," I insisted and leaned over, using all of Hawke's strength to keep me level. He didn't exert any strength. "All I'm asking is to talk to you."

"You've been talking to me all day."

I leaned forward and kissed him, fingertips settled on his chin while I insisted he move his mouth against mine. Hawke laughed and someone yelled in our direction.

"I'm not good at saying things like this," I said, carefully picking my words, "but you're everything to me. I would stay here if you asked me to, start a life. I would even go back to school if it'd make you happy and get that useless English degree."

Before I could finish, Hawke pulled me off the stool and onto his lap to kiss me,  _hard_.

After two pubs and a reconfiguration of my equilibrium, Hawke and I began walking through the lively streets, passing musicians we tossed money to. The streets were full of long legs and people yelling about sports teams I'd never heard of, but it was cozy.

I discovered that Dublin was full of statues.

"Look at  _that_ ," Hawke started and pointed out a statue I would've mistaken for actual people in passing. "The  _Hags with the Bags_. What a monument of my country."

The statue was of two women, seated with bags at their ankles, in the middle of a conversation. I raised a finger at Hawke to signal for him to wait and promptly took a seat on the oldest looking of the two's lap. Wrapping my arms around her neck, I looked back at Hawke and crossed my legs with a bobbing ankle.

"I've always wanted to ride a grandma. Do you think she's my type?"

"Shagging a granny, Fenris? Don't hurt me so."

"Old people," I sighed with a dismissal shrug and kicked up a leg. "Nothing speaks to me more than a lack of elasticity in skin. It's the  _sag_. Saggy shag."

Hawke gagged but didn't resist taking a picture.

"I'd let you watch."

He jogged toward me and scooped me off the statue as if I were on fire.

I was carried down the street, and the entire time Hawke frantically talked to me about the weather. He was scrubbing his brain of what I'd said, and my response was to ask him if he knew of any nearby nursing homes.

"We're gonna go to mass in the mornin' if you don't stop with your filthy mouth."

I grabbed my phone and began taking pictures of him frowning at me.

"I call this one _Hawke Disapproves_ ," I teased. "This one is  _Hawke Discovers Inferiority in Youth and Vigor No. 5_."

The pictures then turned to a video and I aimed the camera directly on him.

"Say something, Hawke."

"Hump off, ya brutal babe."

I opened my mouth in faux-shock and muttered 'what the fuck?' He laughed and that was my cue to pull him down into an apologetic kiss that surprised us both.

We ran through the streets of a neighborhood I couldn't identify, past places I wouldn't remember in the morning, and there were more statues to be had. We'd taken our beer into the street and were walking as we drank, striding past shops I told myself I would visit at some point. Hawke suddenly grabbed my arm and tugged me to a stop, and I grumbled when beer sloshed onto my hand. As I whipped my fingers dry, I didn't look up.

"This'll really get you goin'.  _The Prick with the Stick_  is your man, I think."

Hawke pointed out the statue of James Joyce, and I thrust my beer into his palm. The statue was triple my size, but that didn't stop me from wrapping my arms around it and tightly hugging Joyce's cold exterior close to my equally lead heart.

"Fenris," Hawke started as he took a picture, holding my beer beneath his armpit, "are you  _crying_?"

" _No_ ," I lied. "I'm just really happy."

This picture was followed by one of Hawke mocking a statue of James Larkin's pose with the infamous  _Erection in the Intersection_  towering behind him. His eyes were squinted and he was clearly drunk, but that didn't stop me from promptly applying a filter and posting the picture everywhere I could. The world deserved to see Garrett Hawke happy.

We stumbled back to the inn after eating chips sodden with gravy on the sidewalk. Hawke rambled about the city's history, but he focused more on needle users and infamous bingers than the walking tour segments. He knew everything, even though he hadn't been there for years, and the way he'd held Ireland so close to his heart spoke to me on levels. I'd never had a home, and I barely had one that wasn't through him at that point, but it filled me with displaced nostalgia.

"We're going to church in the morning," Hawke promised after we returned to our room.

I stripped down and climbed into bed with him, following it with a defiant roll. Once settled onto the mattress, he reached out and massaged my post-bound chest with deft hands. I breathed deep for the first time in what felt like twenty-four hours. "You've got to stop wearing those things for so long. You know they're bad for you."

"You'll have a hell of a time getting me out of this bed."

"Come here," Hawke muttered, annoyed by how I'd dismissed his concern. He yanked me to his chest, which I didn't mind.

Hawke's hand trailed along my hip. His fingers ghosted over the elevated bone and then toward my navel where he made slow, sleepy circles beneath my bellybutton. To get comfortable, I turned over so that my back was flush against his chest. I didn't blink when he dragged the very tips of his nails toward my dipping abdominals and down toward my mound. Instead, I rasped, entirely receptive to whatever he had in mind.

"Touchy," he murmured against the back of my head with a chuckle.

"Only for you," I snapped back, but there wasn't enough bite in my words.

Hawke didn't need another response to know he had permission. Two large fingers trailed along malleable folds and shamelessly spread them open. Hawke prodded at the pink center with his middle finger, teasing the pulsating entrance with languid strokes. The gliding touch exposed my tucked away wetness, and I seized when he pushed a finger inside to soak the digit and drag it toward my clit.

I moaned into the pillow in attempt to veil how I was choking on air. His hand goaded me to be louder, making me ripe for the taking with determined petting. I didn't want to writhe just yet, but drinking made me gluttonous.

He pushed a finger inside and kept it there, thrusting with determined stabs that hinged us together. I whispered his name like a chant and impatiently rocked toward the center of his palm.

"How do you want it?" he asked, breathing heavily along my shoulder.

> _I don't know how it happened, but Pretty Boy sucked me off the other night. Right in the back of the Hanged Man he got on his knees and made me drop-trou. Made isn't a good word here. I'd been aching to see him go to work for some time, but that's what bothered me about it. I know sex is like work to him or a kind of currency. I've seen him get in that big black car and step out of it an hour later, high and stumbling down the street with a bag in hand. I didn't do anything for him, didn't give him a reason to feel in debt to me, but it wasn't easy not to think about it while he was down there. Big-lipped baby, too young for me, but he moaned and let slobber drip down my balls like he knew more than I ever would. It wasn't a good time to tell him that I liked him or that he scared the shit out of me, but it was all those things. I want to give back to him if there's a next time. He'll never have to feel like he's working when he's with me._

We went to church hung-over. From the moment Hawke untangled our limbs to the sound of his alarm, I decided I didn't have to like him for the next twenty-four hours. He punctuated this distaste by smacking my bare ass over and over again until I finally relented and showered with him, but I didn't speak to him. I only wilted against his chest, half-dead.

The cathedral was pretty in the way that most religious things are oppressively beautiful. Hawke was a fanatic Catholic down to his random bouts of queer guilt and self-loathing, and I was underwhelmed by the ornateness of it all. It reminded me of Danarius' house, a prime example of how Tevinter citizens' needed to be closer to God than Jesus himself.

When we took our seats, I immediately pressed my forehead against the wooden pew in front of me and reminded myself vomiting in God's house was a one-way ticket to eternal damnation. Granted, I had to rationalize that my penchant for sodomy, freewill and copious amounts of Ten Commandment rebellion had already landed me there. I was just too polite.

"Maybe the Communion wine will help your hanger."

I shoved Hawke out of spite, and he chuckled.

"Fenris, not in front of  _the Lord_."

"Fuck the Lord, alright?"

Immediately, I regretted that, but regret was not enough. I felt my shoulder get tapped by a passing deacon and he pointed toward the door.

"He didn't mean it," Hawke quickly said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders like he hadn't fucked me inside out less than five hours ago. "He just  _really_ needs God right now."

"He is one to talk."

"I do love to talk," Hawke agreed, continuing to smile.

Less than five minutes later, the both of us were striding down the street in search of breakfast.

"I cannot believe you managed to get us kicked out of the Lord's House."

"He was overreacting," I insisted for the fourth time. "You could've stayed."

"That was _supposed_  to be a  _joint_ experience."

"We'll take a bath in bleach together tonight."

Dublin, while sometimes reminding me of the black grime that accumulates on a sidewalk after rain, was Hawke. I fell in love with the city because it mirrored him down to his ability to understand the multitudes of differentiating people who walked into his life. It was like any other city where different cultures melded together by chance, but in a much more hodgepodge fashion. I supposed that was inevitable when smaller countries were a hop skip away, but I could see how it'd condition someone to never think twice about talking to an outsider.

That was the thing. People _loved_  talking in Ireland, and by the middle of my first week, I'd figured out how to have a conversation in a way I never had before.

"Dublin's good for you," Hawke said while ignoring is buzzing phone.

Anders had been calling incessantly. Hawke took his calls more so than not, but we were carrying flowers to his father's grave. It wasn't the time to listen to someone lament Kirkwall.

"I'm not going to want to leave," I admitted.

The small Catholic cemetery Malcolm was buried in had bodies older than my country. Before walking to Malcolm's plot, I found myself kneeling down and inspecting weathered dates, rubbing my oily fingers along them in hopes of feeling the forgotten numbers.

"It's fucking cold," Hawke hissed and sniffed back snot. I rolled my eyes when he hocked it up and spat his loogie onto the sidewalk. "Mulled is happening after this."

"Who knew Ireland was synonymous with a binger?"

"That's a stereotype, love. I'm just a miserable man."

We smiled at one another and continued walking through the dreary weather toward the plot. It was tucked away among what looked to be the Hawke Family corner. Seeing headstones so old they were tilted forward and cracked, I stared at the names in awe and thought to ask Hawke if he knew about any of his ancestors, but when I turned to ask, I stopped.

Hawke had found Malcolm.

"You know," Hawke said, sounding cautious, as if he didn't know how to discuss his father with me. He never had before. "Malcolm is a Scottish and English name."

"So is Garrett," I said with a half-smile and walked toward him.

"Blasphemy then. We're fucking liars."

I crossed my arms over my chest and stood beside him, thinking about how six feet beneath us was a man's corpse. Not just any man's, though. It was the person who'd molded Hawke into the person he was right then.

"When you watch someone die the way he died, you start thinking about how the body's a fighter. The body's a machine, and it  _wants_ to live," Hawke slid an arm around my waist and continued, "and you start thinkin' –  _why_? Why does the body want to keep going, even when the bones are brittle and you're suffocating beneath fuckin' tumors? There's got to be a source for that will. Every ounce of you is fighting down to the final moment. No one  _wants_  to let their mind go, but your body keeps going, even after your thoughts are gone."

"Unfinished business?" I asked. "Our species' obstinate need to reproduce?"

"I don't think it's that simple."

I handed Hawke the flowers I was cradling and insisted, "Tell me what you think."

"It's love."

"Ah," I nodded, "so it's  _that_ complicated."

"I think so. My dad had a horse's heart. Heavy and full of blood, Fenris. He knew how to love people and put _them_  first. He ran the races and always won. When you and I were first getting on and having problems, I remember thinking that he'd know what to do. He'd have the answer that was probably sittin' right there in front of me. Parents," he said and then paused, "especially this old son of a bitch, always know more than we give them credit for. He wanted to keep running that race for his wife and sniveling brats. This wasn't what he wanted, and that's the annoying thing about terminal illness. We just think - oh, they came to terms with it. They were okay leaving behind their family. That's not true. It's not."

"Then what do you  _think_  he would've said about us? I think you know him better than you realize."

"He'd say, 'stop steppin' around and do what me and your mum did,' and then probably tell me to fix my hair or something. Maybe buy a hat."

" _Oh_ ," I breathed, realizing what he meant, "is that what  _you want_  to do?"

"I'd run away with you in a heartbeat if I thought you were ready."

Silence bloomed between us as I thought.

"We have unfinished business in Kirkwall," I reminded him and then collected myself. "But when it's all said and done, and we're not where we are now, then I'll go to the ends of the earth with you."

Hawke swiped his bangs to the side in that habitual fashion of his, and he smiled.

"I remember I had my first drink with him right here, actually. When my grandpa died, he took me to this spot and reminded me that this shit is temporary and God doesn't give second chances, so go down fighting. I think about throwing fists all the time and the reasons I keep at what I do because of that conversation. I was maybe thirteen, I think? It wasn't long after that he got diagnosed, and he lied about it being terminal for so long."

"Do you think he knew then? When you two had that conversation?"

"I never thought about it before," Hawke said and set the flowers down. "Knowing him, though? He probably did."

"I think…" I cleared my throat. "I think… he would've had to have been someone admirable. I would've liked him."

"What makes you say that, Pretty Boy?"

"Because he created you," I furrowed my brow in thought, hesitating, "and I love you."

Hawke didn't say anything to that, but the slightest smile reached the corner of his mouth as he gazed down at the pale, smooth stone meant to sum up someone's life.

"You know what this means, Fenris?" he asked, swiping away a couple fallen branches. I didn't dare acknowledge the fact his eyes were glistening, but I did lean over to kiss the top of his head.

"Enlighten me."

"We've gotta end up arse up tonight, for Malcolm's Honor."

The Gollier was a dive that overlooked the River Liffey, and it stank of rotting fish and every disappointment in my life. That didn't stop Hawke and I from stumbling inside later that evening, after we'd stuffed ourselves with some pie dish. It was packed to the brim with the working class, and there was something about it that embodied the spirit of Hawke's bar. The only difference was that a pub session was going on, which meant the live music was loud and the locals were yelling over it to do what humans did best, talk shit.

"Whiskey," Hawke insisted

"I don't know if I can handle whiskey tonight."

"Don't lie to me. You drink me under the table every time."

I acquired a smug smile that Hawke pointed out with a laugh.

"That's my boy," he said and ordered the first round.

Within the first hour I was leaned over the bar, laughing at his stories about how he'd managed to meet Varric before I myself came to Kirkwall. It changed every time just like Varric's tales.

"He was drunk at a Renaissance Fair my little sister dragged me to, telling these bullshit stories about high dragons to babies. He was actually telling stories to  _children while drunk_ , and I think the parents thought it was an act, but it wasn't. I sat down beside him, also drunk, asking for stories about dragons and where I could get one, and his breath was  _whiskey_. Varric has always been my best mate, but he's a fuckin' creep of a good man."

"Don't you think it's weird how he's met everyone he knows at a fair?"

Before Hawke could answer, I heard something too familiar. A chill trickled down my spine, and I glanced to my side just in time to see the acoustic guitar strumming those achingly familiar chords.

"I've made myself sick of this song," Hawke admitted, but the pub thought otherwise. "Must be full of tourists if this is what they're getting into. That one movie made it pretty popular. Something about a spiffy Irish man leaving letters to his lady post-mortem."

"No," I snapped and pointed at him. "You're not allowed to be sick of this song. You  _tormented_  me with this song for weeks."

"Tormenting, Fenris? That was  _serenading_."

"You would chase me around the bar."

The majority of the bar was shouting _Galway Girl_ , and I knocked back my untouched shot before suddenly yelling along, without Hawke. Slamming my hands against the bar top alongside a complete stranger who'd told me he liked my jacket, I turned toward Hawke who'd propped his cheek up on a palm. He smiled as he watched me recite every word, and I reached for the front of his jacket, only to project the end of the chorus for him.

> _He spent the night again._
> 
> _Sometimes I really do think he knows I'm going to marry him._


	8. Jim Beam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is disgusting and vile, and I apologize for the unapologetic abusive context.

We were back in the states two weeks later.

Instead of dropping my bag off at my house to check on Isabela, Hawke and I drove directly to the Hanged Man. It wasn't normal to anticipate returning to work, to the grind that made getting out of bed feel like a chore, but my fingers twitched at the thought of a dirty glass in need of drying. Kirkwall was as Kirkwall was when we left it, but there was an impending heaviness in the car as I drove through the familiar streets. This heaviness was internal. Hawke was unbothered, preoccupied with the pictures we'd taken while we were in Dublin, and he seemed entirely content with being back home. In truth, I think he really missed his dog.

"My favorite one is where you fought that guy for looking at you funny," Hawke said as he watched the video of me tackling someone twice my height to the ground. I had the timing memorized down to Hawke's laugh and the dead  _thwack_  of us colliding with the cobblestone. "The power of Guinness has never held truer. You two just hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Varric is going to pour his brain into a bowl when he sees this. Look at your tiny ass obliteratin' him."

"Why do you have the video of me fighting someone, but I have the video of you crying over someone's dog, entirely sober?"

"I like reminding myself that you're the only person who could take me in the ring."

Hawke eagerly bounced his knee while I parallel parked in front of the pub.

Anders, Isabela, Varric and Merrill were seated at the bar when we strolled in, and instead of the usual chorus of just Hawke's name, mine was called alongside his.

There was a distinct whine coming from the apartment door, and Hawke dropped his bag to throw open the door and greet his monster with the first hug.

"My son!"

Leaving Hawke to reunite with his kind, I walked toward the four relieved faces and dropped myself down onto a stool between Isabela and Varric. Isabela leaned over and kissed my cheek, leaving behind a purple lipstick stain, and Varric reached out to ruffle my hair with his two hands that were bigger than my face.

Hawke took a seat beside Anders.

"How're you holding up?" Hawke asked him without missing a beat, not even greeting the rest of his friends and going straight toward the source. "Tell me all you want on the phone, but your fibbing doesn't hold strong in person. You're an awful liar, Anders. Work on that."

Anders raised a finger as he sipped his beer.

"We're talking about disbanding CERCLE."

This was not the 'Welcome Home' Hawke was expecting, and it was evident by the way his expression fell to something borderline dark.

"What do you mean disbanding CERCLE?" Hawke snapped beneath his breath, leaning over to look at the three of us who were obviously eavesdropping. "I know Karl's death was a shock, but he wouldn't want you to drop your cause. What was the point of everything then?"

Anders' laugh was sour.

"Who would've thought I'd see the day you'd ask me not to quit CERCLE?"

"Don't be a loon. I'm not telling you I support the cause in that way, but you dropped out of medical school to do this. What're you going to do? Go _back_? They're not going to let you without some kind of plea bargain and proof of financial stability."

Anders had stolen pharmaceutical drugs to sell them for tuition money. They'd caught him, asked him to write a paper of appeal instead of pressing charges, but he'd been too embarrassed to utilize their generosity.

"We can't do it without Karl," Anders murmured. "I don't have enough respect to run CERCLE without him on my side. They don't want a jaded academic calling the shots."

"Karl was also an academic," Varric interjected. "Those guys don't give a shit about your academic background, Blondie. Believing they do is your own issue. What they're going to dig into you for is if you've got a single lens and the pretentious way you project ideas."

Isabela quietly shuffled her deck of cards with pursed lips. Merrill and she exchanged uncertain glances, and I was kneading the edge of the bar.

"You're looking for respect?" Hawke asked, straight to the point and sounding determined. "Is that what you need to keep this going?"

I stopped kneading.

"That's what I need," Anders reiterated, looking directly at Hawke.

"Then get me a jacket."

Isabela grabbed my arm before I launched myself at Anders. She'd seen the twitch, the visceral response to demolish Anders in front of all of our friends and God alike. With Karl barely cold in the ground, the last thing I wanted was to see Hawke put on a tacky spiked jacket covered in even tackier personalized patches. It was like putting on a target.

Anders shifted away from me as if I were roach, believing drawing himself closer to Hawke would do him any good. It fueled the flame, instead.

"We've been back for five minutes," I hissed at Anders and Varric tossed both of his hands up before walking away from the bar to change the music on the jukebox. "Couldn't you have waited five minutes before you reminded us that there's nothing good to come home to."

"Fenris," Merrill cautiously watched me, "don't put it like that. You don't mean it. Kirkwall is your home."

"I know what I  _mean_."

Anders turned on his stool to face me head on.

"If you hate this city so much, then why don't you  _leave_?"

"Because I have loyalty!"

"Is that what you call it?" Anders crooned, and I looked directly past him to give Hawke unflinching eye contact. Hawke was unmoved. "Is that what you've been to Hawke?"

"Anders, stop," Hawke snapped, but it was too late.

Isabela lost her grip on me.

Without needing a single drink, I hurled myself at Anders, knocking us both onto the ground with the same dead smack I'd created in Dublin. Anders was bigger than me in the way that most biological men were, but that didn't keep me from locking my fingers into his dirty Kurt Cobain hair and trying to beat his occipital against the hardwood floor until his brainstem splintered into a thousand shards. I wanted him dead. I wanted him out of my life before he too took away the one iota of happiness I'd made for myself.

Anders landed a punch square on my mouth, busting my lip with a sudden expulsion of blood, which was when everyone shuffled to their feet and decided to tear us apart. Hawke encircled his arms around my waist and yanked me off Anders with a harsh jerk. He set me on my feet, but I attempted to barrel toward Anders once more. Frustrated and tired from our flight, Hawke threw me over his shoulder and walked around the bar to the back alley as I beat his back with both fists. A child unlike I'd ever been before, I yelled for him to put me down.

He slammed me onto my feet hard enough to make my knees give.

"What the fuck, Fenris?" he asked. " _I_  volunteered."

"We've been home for five minutes and look at what's happened! You're taking a dead man's place. You're going to end up in the water just like Karl…"

"This  _has_  to happen, Fenris. Think about how bad things will get for Lowtown if CERCLE isn't acknowledged. They'll keep killing members…"

"Why do  _you_  always decide what's right?" I yelled and I reached for his biceps but then punched my knuckles into his chest. "Why does everyone rally to listen to Garrett Hawke? You could've just let CERCLE  _die_. We could've gone on with our lives and stopped depending on this. What about us? You didn't even  _think_ about us!"

"It's either this or Kirkwall becomes a tourist wasteland. Think about the people who have businesses and the families that've been here for generations. Think about people like  _you_ and  _me_ who came here to escape. Whether or not you like to believe it, you'd suffer, too. We'd be out of jobs, gentrification would fuck us and then we'd all be in government housing."

"What about  _us_?" I repeated.

Hawke stared at me, his expression drifting. I noticed the way his eyes shifted downward, and I stepped back only for my spine to smack against the alleyway's wall.

"It's never been about us," I sternly answered for him.

"I didn't say  _anything_ ," Hawke countered, but it was mainly a veiled way to tell me to shut up. "It's important I do this."

"Tell me why it's so important."

He didn't say anything, and my stern expression dissolved into a devastated frown.

"Don't look at me like that," he pleaded. "I have to look out for my own. I've looked out for you and now I need to look out for my best friend."

"I'm not staying here then."

"Fenris," Hawke started, raising both hands, "don't pull that shit right now. I'm askin' you to not for once. We had a good time and now you're…"

"I'm not _pulling_  anything," I tersely promised and started walking toward the door back. "I'd turn in my two weeks, but I'm not feeling very professional right now."

"You're  _quitting_?"

"I'm not just  _quitting_ , Hawke. I'm doing what Anders suggested and  _leaving_  Kirkwall."

Hawke looked as if I'd backhanded him.

"Don't listen to him! You're doing exactly what he wants you to do…"

"Why  _not_?" I asked. "When you seem to listen to him without a second thought?"

He couldn't answer to that, and even if he'd thought of something, it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't acknowledge anyone as I grabbed my luggage and car keys from the bar. I decided right then that maybe, when I was ready, I would call Isabela and explain.

Hawke's dog was the only one I said goodbye to.

"Fenris…" Hawke yelled in warning as he darted out of the alleyway and into the kitchen. I heard his boots determinedly smacking against the ground. "Don't you dare go back! Don't you fucking leave me for him! You can't…"

Chair legs scraped the hardwood floor, and Varric and Anders held him back as I let the door slam behind me.

If there was a way for me to sum up my life before Kirkwall, then I suppose I would have to use the word  _cocaine_. Not in the way that media exploits the drug as a frat boy pastime, but in the way that the 1980s normalized it alongside expensive designer coats and shoulder pads.

I was sixteen when I did my first line off a socialite's bathroom counter, and as relevant as that moment should be, I can't remember her name. I never will, but it was the party Danarius first saw me at. It's what makes the moment ultimately unapologetic and not another tender coming of age novel about closing the gap between adolescence and young adulthood. That night, Danarius made a passing remark about my baby face, and I spoke back.

I should've never spoke back.

The point of this is that the thing people won't tell you about drugs is how they feel like home. Not even the sensation, but the people who endure the lifestyle and addiction together. There's something rode hard, exhausted even, that only people who abuse understand. It doesn't matter if you derive from disenfranchised circumstances or you're a part of a trust fund. It's all the same tired language. Unless you're literate, you can't read the stories, nor can you fully realize the nuances, unspoken reverberations, etc. It's a lens impossible to recreate for the masses. The heart of the matter is ultimately inaccessible.

I wanted to go home.

It was the first time in nearly four years I missed Tevinter.

The stable instability called for me, throbbing in my head like a rotten tooth. While there'd been chaos in Tevinter there'd also been structure, and that's what I longed for. Waking up in the morning without purpose was beginning to scrape its nails along my reason, but everything I'd thought freedom would be had been anything but. While on my knees for an old man I'd had more access to what I wanted than I did deciding I loved Hawke. Rationalizing how my current vehemence outweighed the unease with Danarius had become an unmanageable fog.

My phone buzzed, and I grabbed it only to see the picture of Hawke's chest hair on the front. I groaned and tossed my phone onto the backseat as I drove, but after a short pause, finagled with a death wish while reaching back for it. Once retrieved, I glanced at the screen and did nothing. There was nothing left to say.

Danarius had a house in a gated community in Hightown, and due to his proximity, I knew he spent a majority of his time there to keep an eye on me.

It was dark by the time I arrived at the mansion, surprised to find my name still on the list and the keycard on my windshield still functioning. When the gate slid open, I watched its slow crawl with disgust and impossible self-loathing. Of course, I was crawling back to him like a starved dog, but Lowtown had given me nothing but grief, and I was hungry for a fix.

I wanted a fix.

Hawke had wrung it out of me and drenched me again.

The house's windows were lit when I pulled up, and I resented the foreboding structure's stonewalls and deceiving charm as I pushed open my car door and quickly stepped out. At one point, I would've stridden inside and walked directly to Danarius' and my bedroom, but I didn't have the audacity to pull that card anymore. I impatiently pressed the doorbell and waited.

Hadriana answered the door, and as soon as I saw her, my nose wrinkled into a sneer. We hadn't seen one another in three years, but she looked even worse than before.

Her sleek chestnut bob and black Chanel coat suggested she was expensive, but the gaunt cheekbones and overcompensating eye shadow implied she was as strung out as ever. The ladder climber had been praying for socialite status for years, and she resented me for having taken that title from her before she'd even realized it. The rivalry between us had reached a head when she framed me for stealing Danarius' stash and in turn had me beat within an inch of my life.

"You're fucking kidding me," she dryly muttered. "What happened? Did your  _daddy_  finally cut you off?"

"Eat me," I said and pressed my fist against the doorframe. "Is he around?"

"He's here," Hadriana answered and looked me over. "You've gotten fat."

"At least something about me has changed. You're still a bitch."

I pushed past her into the house and familiarized myself with the home again. The grand entrance was too much for my taste, and it always had been. I'd once asked Danarius to buy a flat, but he'd refused because it wasn't opulent enough. I'd been trapped in archaic structures with confusing rooms and hallways for years.

"You're not allowed to be here," she smugly added as I darted toward one of the staircases. "If you walk in here uninvited, then you'll probably never walk back out."

"Haven't you heard?" I asked without glancing back at her. "He's missed me."

"Missed beating your stupid ass, maybe."

There were faces throughout the hallways I didn't recognize; making it obvious I hadn't been around in years. One of the upstairs dens was spotted with tired kids holding drinks, and most didn't pass me a second look as I traipsed through the center of the room and into the master wing. Their faces were worn like Hadriana's, and I wasn't sure if some were eighteen or a well preserved thirty-five. What I  _did_  know was that every single one was a groomed criminal ready to be Danarius' drug mule.

"Isn't that Fenris?" someone whispered as I wiped the sweat off my hands and onto my leggings.

"Fenris would never wear that."

"But I heard he was living in Lowtown."

"Well, he  _is_  fucking the owner of that one bar. Danarius never shuts up about it."

"You mean the owner of the Hanged Man who's also a big time drug dealer."

"So does he  _like_  being poor? Maybe it was a liberal arts social experiment. Danarius still pays for everything for him, even his useless English degree and new money car."

"Or _maybe_  the dick was _that_  good."

"I'd imagine anything would be hitting it better than what he was getting before."

"Don't give me a mental image. I'll _try_  to overdose."

An exchange of faceless laughter followed, and I quickened my stride.

Danarius' double bedroom doors were shut.

I stared at the two foreboding doors and wondered if I was doing the right thing, but when had I ever done the right thing, even when I tried? I'd tried to explain myself to Hawke twenty times over, but he never understood where I was coming from. When he attempted to it was force. His reactions always let me know we were incapable of leveling. He couldn't understand what I'd endured, and I would always be screaming inside my head about the void Danarius had instilled in me. We would never work together, and I'd been fooling myself to think I could handle being free. I'd been a slave to Danarius since I was a child.

I always would be.

Danarius was seated at his desk when I shoved open the doors.

There was someone asleep in his bed, and the same habitual sense of brainwashed betrayal hiccupped in my throat. I recalled being eighteen and having just moved into his Tevinter house after fighting for his attention with lowbred antics. I recalled walking into the bedroom we shared and seeing the first stranger curled up on my side of the mattress. The shame and rage that'd followed when he told me he had a wife and two sons almost twice my age had been immeasurable, invalidating every naïve misconception I'd had. All of that flooded back at the sight of that anonymous figure, and I shakily exhaled with clenched fists.

The repugnance with myself was impossible to shake. Whatever fondness I'd once had for Danarius had been replaced with hatred.

"Hadriana forewarned me," Danarius said, speaking with blatant disinterest.

He was wearing the same style of black suit he'd always worn. Danarius once told me his wardrobe cost more than I was worth in body parts, and when I'd told him how much a heart went for on the black market, he'd tried to slam my fingers in a desk drawer.

I noted the weight in front of him and my eyes flitted toward his hands. He was cutting a couple grams, but it was chump change in comparison to what I'd seen before. There'd been times when I drove fifteen kilos across Minrathous as if it were a casual run to the grocery store.

"You always said I could come back," I countered before he could ask why I was there.

"Is that what you're doing, Fenris?" he chuckled and then set down his razor. "Are you coming back to me? And here I was beginning to believe our mutual fondness was no longer quite as mutual as it'd once been. You've been running for a long time."

He was making a line, and I eyed it.

"It was a break. I needed time to consider my options," I lied.

"Three years is hardly what I'd consider a vacation."

I averted my eyes when he stood.

"You broke my heart," Danarius continued. "There were many times I could've had Garrett Hawke killed, but I'm fortunately not a cruel man."

"He didn't do anything…"

"Back then, maybe not, but now, there's a reason you're here."

Danarius approached me and my breathing quickened when he reached out. I expected the customary smack across the face that'd make my knees lock, but he simply grasped onto my shoulders with long icy fingers. His nails softly anchored into the fabric of my shirt and he tugged me closer to him. My cheek pressed against his chest as my stomach curdled.

"We'll take care of him, Fenris."

My phone in my back pocket vibrated again, and Danarius reached down to take it from me. I knew who was calling before Danarius answered, but I didn't dare move.

"Good evening, Mr. Hawke."

Hawke's enraged scream for me filled the space between Danarius and me.

"We'll be promptly blocking your number from this moment on, and if I ever see or hear of you nearing my property again, then I'll see to it you're taken care of in a much more efficient manner than Mr. Thekla. Unlike the Chantry, I have enough self-respect to wash my hands."

"Is that a fuckin' threat?" Hawke shouted loud enough for me to hear.

"I'm a busy man. I have no interest in participating in a Trojan War. There is no threat. There is only a promise."

Danarius promptly hung up and blocked his number for me.

"No more of that," he murmured and pushed his fingers through my hair.

I blinked back a sudden pooling of frustrated tears. I'd never wanted someone more than I wanted Hawke.

> _I've never wanted someone more than I want that boy._
> 
> _We were drunkenly playing the slap-hand game in the Hanged Man tonight, and when his palms caught mine, he didn't jerk them back. He grabbed them up and then tugged me close until he could wrap his arms around me and pull me into a sloppy kiss. It was a moment one would've wanted to be embarrassed about, but I've got no reason to be embarrassed. Not now._
> 
> _He told me I was the best thing that'd ever happened to him, and I told him I loved him. He asked for how long. He wanted to know how long I'd love him, and when I said until he got sick of me, I could see he didn't know how to believe that._
> 
> _He didn't say it back, but he gave me a look that told me 'I love you' a million times over._

Two lines and a slobbered on fifth of Jim Beam later, I woke up, naked in my old bed. The blackout curtains eliminated my sense of time, but that didn't matter. No longer did I have a job or an obligation to be anywhere before nine in the evening. The only discomforting part of waking up in that bed was the fact I was squished between two people and not beside one.

"Shit," I whispered with my fingers in my hair.

Danarius had offered me a line, and without second-guessing myself, I'd snorted it like a starved rat. He could've offered me a speedball, and I would've graciously taken it from him, but Danarius was being suspiciously conservative. Before, he would've taken me by the arm and guided me directly into the den to drink with the others and encourage debauchery. That didn't happen my first evening home. He sharply watched me navigate into the den on my own, and when I took a seat beside the perturbed Hadriana, not a word was spoken.

Danarius was looking for any sense of agency I had and scheming to destroy it.

While blown, I'd convinced myself I missed him, which was how I ended up in his bed with the worst hangover of my life.

"There is coffee downstairs," Danarius murmured when he heard me stir. "When you've had a cup, tell them to bring a tray upstairs, brush your teeth and come back to bed."

That was a hard order disguised as a soft request.

I donned a robe and did exactly as he said.

Unlike the night before, the mansion was entirely empty, void of even Hadriana. She was most likely in her own bedroom elsewhere, but the emptiness was suffocating. The mansion's rare stillness had always been my favorite part of existing under Danarius' influence. It was the only time when the mansion allowed itself to feel like a home and not a chaotically operated business. The longer I'd been with Danarius the more frequent the stillness had become, but it had never been enough to satisfy me or give me comfort.

I sleepily unblocked Hawke's number as I stood in the kitchen with my gold cup, blinking through the crust in my eyes. His text messages hadn't been delivered and neither had his voicemails, but he'd managed to send me an email.

Wincing as I sat down at the breakfast table, I opened it and began to read.

> … _if you had any concept of how much I love you, then you'd understand I'm not doing this to disrespect you. There are some things bigger than the both of us and…_

He was still defending himself.

I closed the email and reached into the robe's pocket for Danarius' customary cigar and matches. Unblinking, I lit one and stared out onto the backyard with a despondent expression.


	9. Coffee I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter made me act like a woobie, and I kept listening to PVRIS' Holy because that's my Anders and Fenris song, okay?

There had to be a reason for why I turned out the way I did.

This lingering question, this internalized quest for answers, dredged itself along the interior of my chest cavity the moment I dropped myself onto one of Danarius' many couches. His main den, the room where everyone lingered from morning until the following morning, was consistently teeming with once provincial social climbers, but I hardly saw them. Through the cocaine haze that'd once given me energy and dwindled into an evasive sense of pleasure, I turned to chomping pills like penny candy and promising myself I'd be forlorn, sardonic even, but I wouldn't _dare_ delve into tearful regret.

Over the past four weeks, Hawke's attempts to contact me had softly dwindled from multiple emails a day to one a day, and finally, to short, pleading emails in sporadic bursts. The panic sometimes shifted into rage where he would tell me I was doing this to myself and he'd given me all of him four times over only for the fit to disappear into a cloud of sullen regret. He claimed to miss me, sent me pictures of us being happy that always left me choking down sobs in a coke sprinkled bathroom, and promised he'd take me very far away if I'd just come _home_. He didn't want me to die, he said, usually at some point in every email. He didn't want me to die.

But it was that abstract word again. _Home_ and its wavering definition had turned my skin inside out and tanned it into malleable leather, but this time, I was out of fabric. There were only so many coats I could make before there was nothing but scraps that couldn't be used for even the smallest patchwork.

"Get dressed," Danarius ordered after standing over me for an entire thirty seconds. I hadn't acknowledged him, and in turn, filled him with snap-rage. "Then go to my room."

"Why should I get dressed if you're just going to strip me?"

That earned me a pointed backhand against the side of my skull, and my ears started to ring. The foreign urge to spit on him followed, and I surprised myself when I stood up and brushed past him with a sharp shove. I thought about what he'd look like as road kill. I thought about maggots unfurling in their life cycle beneath his purpled skin. I thought about ending _his_ entire life cycle, ripping his existence from his cold, wrinkled fingers the same way he'd done to me, before I could legally take my first drink.

There were many things about returning to Danarius that'd struck me, aside from his hand. One of them being the idea that sex repulsed me outside of Hawke. When finished, it left me carved out like a summertime melon. Musky and over ripened, I considered decomposition and the idea of returning to the earth as nothing but thermal energy. It hadn't been this way when I was younger, and I lamented the times when I'd been willing to kiss anyone, suck anyone, fuck or be fucked by anyone. What Danarius had made me was a mockery of my life before, and I ached over the person I'd been. I couldn't remember him, but I knew that I'd liked him more than what I'd become. Sex had turned to currency and survival. It no longer belonged to me but to a systematic hell.

"We're in a dispute with the Qunari," Danarius said as he watched me tug on a pair of black jeans and an expensive sweater of the same color. I glanced over my shoulder to acknowledge he was staring. "They're convinced we owe them money."

I hated the collective _we_. There was no _we_. It was just _him_ and his bank account.

"And you don't?" I asked sharply. I sat down at the vanity to begin rubbing moisturizer into my face.

"Not the amount they're accusing us of. Hadriana has always meticulously kept my books. She can't seem to find where the mysterious hundred thousand could've gone. It's not in our bank accounts, and there's never been an acquisition. In short, we're being duped."

"Bold," I muttered and then leaned back to examine myself. I looked like shit. "But what does that mean? Do you think the Arishok is going to take a swat on the wrist and give the money back?"

Danarius appeared behind me and cupped the side of my face. His icy thumb stroked my jawline, and I couldn't see his face in the reflection, but I knew he was about to speak.

"They've targeted me, and I'm not the only one."

He chuckled when I turned to look at him.

"Who else?" I asked.

"There's speculation, but rumors have surfaced the Qunari are attempting to overthrow every relevant dealer in Kirkwall. They've made their headquarters by the Lowtown docks where our importing takes place. They watch how much comes in and comes out."

"Meaning," I engaged him, already knowing where this was going.

"Meaning, not only are they beneath the radar, but they're transparently attempting to take over territories and the clientele individual dealers have established. This wouldn't be an issue we couldn't handle if the government itself wasn't turning a blind eye and pointedly making things more difficult for the rest of us." Danarius paused in a dramatic fashion before petting along the back of my head. "All of my runners have been switching between three cars each, and it's an expensive endeavor to maintain."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I know just how friendly you've been with the Qunari."

My blood flash froze.

"You forgave me for that."

"But I've never forgotten," he lowly reminded and leaned over so that I could finally see his face in the mirror. "And I will never forget what you gave Garrett Hawke."

Myself. He meant myself.

I stared at the scars on my hands that were a constant reminder I'd broken loyalty to Danarius and been forced to convince him I _did_ care. At the time, I'd believed that in my heart of hearts I was loyal to him and him alone, but one night, after too much cocaine and whiskey, he went too far. It was the first physical altercation we had, and it'd defined me for the rest of my life.

Back then, I still had fight in me. I'd fled to the Arishok on a defiant whim, instated myself in his respect and affection for some weeks, only to grow fragile when Danarius came calling for me again. Danarius had been given a sugarcoated report of what I'd told them, and in order to prove I loved him and needed him to keep paying for my family, I'd agreed to submit to the ultimate test of pain tolerance. Full body scarification was the condition, and I saw it as an honor, but in truth, even then I'd known I didn't love him.

Irreparable damage had been done in the way I'd divulged all of Danarius' secrets to that sector of the Qun, and now, if they overthrew Danarius, it would be on me. Had Danarius found out what I'd told them, then he would've murdered me in cold blood. He would've dismembered me himself, tossing my bagged body into the sea, and I would've never been found. We were too personal to be made a public statement, and no one would've asked questions. I wasn't one to be missed.

"The Chantry is working with the Qunari, then?" I asked and heard the ring of panic in my voice. "That means they're going to target CERCLE."

"They already have."

"Well, fuck," I dismissively breathed.

Keeping a stoic face exerted all of that day's energy, but Danarius knew that stung me.

"You're going to turn yourself over to the Arishok again," he commanded and reached for my bicep, "and you're going to be my mole. Do whatever it takes to convince them you're converting to their side. Whatever information you give them about me will hardly compare to whatever you get on them. Report everything but my arsenal, of course. If you do this, then you'll be welcome home as warmly as you once were. It can be just us again."

"Fine," I said resolutely and reached for my Rolex. I had Danarius put it on for me. "But I don't want anyone else sleeping in my bed when this is over. If you bring someone into our room, then I'll bit my tongue through. I've given you enough."

"Don't flatter yourself, Fenris," he said as he traced my earlobe. "You've never given me anything."

I packed my bags while Danarius took Hadriana out to dinner. She'd made the reservations for him, making her company obligatory, but he'd whispered he'd rather me be with him than her right as he walked out the bedroom door. Me on his arm simply didn't look as good, in his opinion. A strange, effeminate male covered in scars bruised his public face, and like always, he bruised what meager self-esteem I had left. It wasn't even the fact I was male. It was because I was pretty, but too nondescript. People raised their eyebrows at me in respectable places with older demographics because they couldn't define me.

Kneeled down, digging through a closet drawer in an attempt to find one of my travel bags, I spotted something black and glossy. My lips parted as I snatched it up, and I instantly recognized my stolen phone. I attempted to turn it on in hopes of seeing whether or not the videos and pictures had been erased or not. It was long dead.

"Shit," I whispered and tossed it into my bag.

The plan was that I would lose contact with Danarius for three weeks while I infiltrated the Qunari. No one could follow me, my phone would be untracked and my car cleaned of devices. The Qunari were bound to look for those things, anyway. They'd know if I was being followed, if I was trying to double cross them, and if they even smelled betrayal on me, then they'd kill me on spot. Danarius needed their information too much to risk not trusting me.

The debugging was irrelevant, though. As soon as my bags were packed and my suitcase of money was shoved into the Mercedes' trunk, I drove straight toward Lowtown and directly past the docks' gate with a heaving chest. There was one place for me to go, one person I knew who would listen to what I had to say and could potentially protect me from what I was about to do. It was a revolting option, but there was no other way out.

Anders' apartment was a bigger shit heap than Hawke's.

Smoking like a freight train as I buzzed Anders' door over and over again, his apartment didn't have a speaker, forcing him to descend the stairs and greet me. From the door, I could see him stepping past the flaking, orange, 70s wallpaper with a cigarette in hand, and he looked like he hadn't slept in days. His muscle t-shirt hung loose off his pale torso, and his ash blond hair was pulled back from his face. I knew that fatigued look. He'd been doing research.

"Fenris," he said in tired surprise when he saw me. "We thought you were dead."

"You sound disappointed."

We stared at one another for a longtime, and I remembered a period in my life when I would've kissed him hard while he slipped a bag of cocaine into my tightly clenching fingers.

"You look terrible." He finally stepped to the side and let me into his building. "What're you on?"

"I'm on so much Xanax I caught myself drooling on the way here."

"You shouldn't be driving then," he said, sounding even wearier. "Why are you here? I figured that punch to your face would've drove you off for a while."

It'd already been a month.

"Danarius told me something I think you should know."

Anders considered that, motioned with his hand, and then turned to climb the three flights of stairs with me tagging along behind him. His apartment was a small one bedroom with wallpaper that complimented his hallway in a striking blue and silver. His mismatched Goodwill furniture was in excess due to the amount of company he kept, and I'd spent several nights on his furniture before becoming closer to Hawke than him. I still had the pattern of his framed posters memorized, and when I looked at them upon entering, I was won over by nostalgia.

"Do you want anything to drink?" he asked and then rethought the question. "Don't _drink_ on whatever you're taking. I don't want to deal with a corpse and then Danarius and Hawke going after me because you finally overdosed."

"Water's fine," I said and dropped my jacket on his armchair. I flopped down on the couch and grunted in annoyance when he returned five minutes later with a fresh cup of coffee. I gingerly took it with a raised brow. "Spare me your niceties."

"Tell me what you know," he said and closed the laptop on his coffee table.

With a calm voice, I told him everything I knew. From Danarius' want to take down the Qunari using me as a mole to the Chantry's apparent affiliation, he was given every single detail there was to give. We only stopped speaking to light cigarettes, and the cigarettes eventually turned into a bong, but with good reason.

"This is more than I expected to deal with," he admitted and wrung his hands. "CERCLE isn't big enough to handle whatever the hell this could mean. Something drastic has to happen to put a stop to everything. Maybe we can't stop it. Maybe we can bring awareness."

"I could still go to the Arishok and feed you notes along with Danarius."

"We should leave that kind of talk to Hawke, and you should lay low. As soon as Danarius comes looking for you, then we'll figure something else out."

"Beyond this, I'm worthless." I articulated the words without self-pity. It was matter-of-fact. "I can't contribute to your cause in anyway that matters."

"You're not worthless," Anders corrected me. "You're sick."

It was hard enough to look at him, but that made it worse.

"Hawke isn't going to wait for you forever," he said, seemingly out of nowhere.

"I'm not up for this conversation."

"You broke his heart."

"Then you go heal it."

"I would if he'd let me."

I pressed my knuckles to my mouth.

"Fenris," Anders began, and though he was beginning that mocking tone, I sensed his caution, "what if I'd never introduced you to Hawke?"

"Then you'd probably be fucking him right now."

"Wrong," he snapped and stood before he knelt down in front of me. He lightly grabbed onto me. "It would've been us. You thought CERCLE was a good idea when we met, and then you met him and everything changed. Tell me to fuck off now so that I can gain closure on this and work with you."

"I've told you to fuck off a hundred times, and I'm not here to work with you."

"Then why are you here? What do _you_ care about?"

That stopped me.

"Lowtown… My friends…" I reluctantly admitted and wouldn't look at him, even though my hand had landed on the one he'd set on my knee. "What else do I have?"

"Then run with us," he pleaded through his anger with me. "Because, at the end of the day, we are the only people who have your back."

I'd known that for too long to even try to argue with him.

"I just can't be a part of this."

"Look alive, Fenris. You've already put yourself here."

Even though he insisted I shouldn't drive, I told him I had to go to Isabela's to hand her apology rent and pack up my things. Thanking him for the coffee, I disappeared with no intentions of ever coming back.

Isabela wasn't there when I arrived, and while it'd been a handful of weeks since I'd gone to Ireland and immediately to Danarius' house, it didn't look as if she'd been home since we'd scattered. This was harrowing, but there was nothing I could do except let myself inside with my key.

My room was the same as I'd left it. I grabbed a storage tub from my closet to begin packing miscellaneous items and used articles of clothing as padding. I had no idea where I was going, but this time I was leaving for good. There was nothing else for me to do. I'd burnt my bridges in Kirkwall, and I finally needed to burn down the whole damn city.

That is, I thought so until I found two things. The first was the liquor bottle Hawke had made for my excessive ring collection. I'd kept losing them, and Varric knew a glassblower at one of his Renaissance fairs, so Hawke had asked the guy to make something for me from the Hanged Man. This had eventually turned into a series of glasswork classes and one of Hawke's many fleeting hobbies. The second item was a red leather journal tossed aside in the bottom of my desk along with my GRE practice books and binders.

I blankly stared at the journal in confusion and reached out to brush my fingers along the cover as I recalled that morning on the beach. Everything about it was blurry because I hadn't been sober, but I recalled tucking it beneath my armpit with intentions of reading it. Life had become too much at that point, so I'd never gotten around to it.

With a soft sigh, I plopped down on the ground with an ashtray at my knee and opened to the first page.

> _I'm about to end an engagement, and there's nothing I can do about it except start on this journal. Therapy is the rich man's way of fixing things, and a twenty-dollar book seems cheaper than sitting on a couch for a hundred bucks an hour._

The penmanship was overtly familiar, and the particular combination of heavy print and the occasional cursive letter filled me with warm affection. Why this was didn't take long to figure out. The longer I sat there and read the journal in my lamp's dim lighting, the more concrete the initial suspicions became. Aside from my breathing, the occasional siren and a lost moth smacking itself against the burning hot light bulb, the room was silent.

The pages weren't signed, and the names were blatantly coded, but Pretty Boy stuck out to me. In vexing disbelief, I realized whom the journal belonged to. Garrett Hawke's deeply personal journal had fallen into my hands by a one in a million chance, and I'd been carrying a Bible of information about him for months without knowing. It was ironic. I'd constantly questioned his motives, agonized over who he was and what he wanted with me, when really it'd been obvious.

His motives had always been love. 

> _Cancer, cancer, cancer…_

He'd never told me about the cancer. Evidently Isabela and Varric had known, but he'd somehow abstained from ever telling me, and there was no way it could've slipped around his family because he never brought me around them, afraid that I'd take us too seriously and run. The worst part was knowing he hadn't been sick just once, but twice and the second time was while we were falling in love faster than either of us could handle. I'd been there with him nonstop, but he'd always called his excessive vomiting and weakness 'bad hangovers' or 'a binge gone wrong.' He'd actually been in agonizing pain and fighting for his life.

I recalled resenting Hawke for not being a slave to his biology the way I was, and my throat threatened to close. How different we were was suddenly a much slimmer slice out of both of our lives.

Whether or not his second run with cancer hadn't been as serious as the first time didn't matter. He'd been too focused on me to openly take care of himself, and it made sense as to why Varric sometimes openly resented me and why Isabela would sternly grab me by my arm when I was being difficult with Hawke around our friends.

Memories of the soft implications that he wanted something humble and ideal had me clenching the front of my sweater until my knuckles burned. That Victorian home was his peace offering for the both of us, and I hadn't taken it because I thought it was too good for two ex-junkies. He had never been the junkie, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had always been me. Anders wasn't half as washed up as I wanted him to be, Hawke wouldn't even snort a line unless he was plastered into oblivion, and there I was, trembling from a lack of sleep and too many chemicals. It had always been _me_.

This wasn't the life I'd wanted for myself when I first left Danarius. I'd started out with so much hope and determination to do right.

Everything Hawke had done that'd infuriated me was explained in a single book, and if he'd said even half of what his journal did, then we would've never returned from Ireland. Truthfully, if he'd told me half of it, then we probably wouldn't have gone to Ireland. I would've finished school, we'd be engaged, and everything he'd wanted would be concrete. Hawke would've had the life he deserved, instead of continuing this routine where he was wrung out time and time again, used by everyone around him.

I set the journal down and hung my face in my hands.

I knew there had to be a way to fix what I'd done to him. Even better, there had to be a way to fix myself and move on while also being better to Hawke.

Angrily swiping tears aside, I stared at the wooden plank that was my bedframe and tried to figure out the resolve, and then it occurred to me. The answer had been in front of me for much longer than anyone could've possibly realized.

The box of packed items didn't come with me when I left my room and returned to my car. Turning over the ignition, I inhaled deeply with rising and dropping shoulders, the reality of what I was about to do garnering a spectrum of anxiety. Whatever happened to me beyond that night day was something I'd have to take responsibility for without pointing the finger. The thought that I was taking control of myself had my hands wet on the steering wheel.

I drove back to Anders without the radio on and concentrated on my breathing from the moment I parked and jabbed my finger into the buzzer.

His expression when he saw me the second time wasn't half as deadened, and he actually looked concerned when I let myself in. Anders tensed as I reached for both sides of his face, pushing my hands toward the bottom of his cheekbones to hold him in place. He didn't jerk away from me the way he'd started to after it came out I was only fucking him for cheaper fixes. He'd found out during our final massive argument pre-fistfight, and it'd changed everything.

"Let me join CERCLE."

His eyes widened, but his grim, pinched expression didn't lift. Anders caught my chin and inspected my features, in search of a lie, and when he didn't find any deception, he dropped his hand and let it hang at his side. Gently, Anders pulled away from me and climbed the stairs again. I took that as my cue to follow him back into the apartment.

"You're serious…" he murmured and trailed off as he opened the hall closet. It was his biggest source of storage and where he kept the leather jackets. I spotted Karl's hanging in the back and glanced away out of respect.

"I wouldn't joke about this," I promised.

"I know you wouldn't."

He didn't hand me a jacket. Anders deposited a box into my arms and drifted into the kitchen for a knife so that I could open it in the living room.

"Hawke asked me to order this for you a while ago, but after you threw a fit about how Danarius tried to force you into one as soon as you came out, he told me to save it."

I sat down with the box and carefully cut it open with the butcher knife, eventually setting the knife aside by my unmoved coffee mug from earlier.

"Tell me why you want to join CERCLE."

Pulling aside the cellophane, I stared into the box.

"I want to do the right thing."

"That's what you always say."

My fingers caught the black heap of fabric settled in the bottom of the box, and my heart grew heavy.

It was a binder.

I stared at the fabric with a lump in my throat, and then glanced at Anders who wasn't looking at me. His eyes were on his phone, trembling. He suddenly stood and strode back toward the hallway where I heard him rustle through the closet once more. Upon returning, there was a leather jacket in his hand, and I noted how it'd already been patched. Anders handed it to me, but he didn't let go until he had his say.

"Do the right thing by taking care of yourself. Wear both from now on. No one's forcing you into it, Fenris. We just want you to be safe."

And that was a collective _we_ I could believe in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want everyone's speculation on this chapter.


	10. PBR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some sin.

And where was Hawke throughout all of this?

He was training with Aveline, pretending I'd relocated to the bottom of the ocean.

Anders told me this while I stood in front of the mirror the next morning, trying on the crisp leather jacket and staring at myself with an uncertain leer. The back of the jacket made me a target with its patched 'FUCK THE CHANTRY,' and I discerned my appearance with a short toss of my bangs. The binder was beneath the muscle t-shirt I'd tugged on, and the circles under my eyes implied weeks of restlessness. It was the most put together I'd looked in days, and I resented myself for it. I'd once looked impeccable, but I was rode hard and put away wet.

Before we walked out of the apartment, I shoved my feet into a pair of burgundy boots and quickly wrapped the strings around my ankles thrice over.

"He's not going to like seeing you there," Anders said.

"Always there to plant the seed of doubt. You're pessimistic for a revolutionist."

He was right, though.

Anders and I walked side-by-side, avoiding my car for the sake of being followed and the fact no one in Lowtown ever drove. He kept glancing at my jacket, and I was self-conscious in everything I was wearing. It was something I hadn't experienced since I was a teenager.

"You didn't sleep much for how much you claim to be doing," Anders observed when I made us stop for coffee at the Gallows. He held the door for me. "Are you up to this?"

I ordered my dead eye and glanced at him while fishing out my wallet.

"I'm fine," I said and thumbed through my cash.

I wasn't fine.

Every microscopic sound sent my skin crawling, and being in Anders' presence for such an extended period of time made me long for the Hanged Man, Hawke's apartment and the afternoons when I'd lazily sleep in his bed with the dog, until he came blundering in for a kiss. Those casual comforts were what I needed after long nights of Danarius hovering over me and returning to a state where Anders had to goad me with a line to get me off the couch.

The espresso melted along my tongue.

"Meetings usually aren't this early," he reassured me with his plain coffee in hand.

"Has he adapted well to the group? Is he even _involved_?"

"He's missed one meeting, and it was for a match."

I snorted, satisfied with his answer.

"At least he still has his priorities."

Darktown was abandoned when we stepped into its snare. Anders reached for my hip to pull me back when one of Danarius' favorites drifted past us, and we wordlessly continued toward the back of the Black Emporium. The sun was climbing higher and higher, but there was no warmth. I blew hot air into my hands right before I jerked open the metal door, and Anders repositioned his beanie to cover his reddening ears. Kirkwall winters weren't known for being unmanageable, but the cold was more direct than usual. There'd be snow soon, which meant I _really_ wouldn't be using my car.

We were greeted with a dark hallway, taunted by its green overcast due to the high windows' tinted glass. Raucous laughter tinged with Hawke's booming voice raced against us.

I stopped in the middle of the hallway as if fighting a gust of wind. The anxiety crept up my esophagus. Hawke was a wall away, which was the closest we'd been after our longest parting since meeting one another. A month didn't seem like much in the grand scheme of our enduring relationship, but it was to me, especially on the conditions I'd left. There was no room for forgiveness, spinning me in a web of mercy. I needed Hawke to be gracious above all things.

"We're late," Anders called out before anyone could peek out the door.

"I believe this is a first!" Hawke answered from inside the room, freezing my steps further. "It's usually _me_!"

"You get away with it because you're charming."

"As if you aren't yourself. No one here's mad."

Anders glanced over his shoulder only to realize I'd stopped. He grunted, reached back for my bicep, but I jerked from his touch. I could move on my own. I didn't need him escorting me into my own dogfight.

"Walk in as if he's not there."

It was the only way Anders could tell me I'd be fine.

He strode inside first and met Hawke with a hug that sent my ears red, but I didn't cast them another look as the murmuring began to fill the space. The room was full of thirty-something derelicts, all in jackets I realized ranged in personality. It was a uniform, but none of them wore it the same.

" _Who would've thought?"_

" _Looks like someone saw the light."_

" _But I heard he was running for Danarius again."_

" _Probably got tired of all the cock-suck."_

" _What a score, though."_

People talked, but the difference with CERCLE was how no one whispered. They were talking as if having a conversation with me, loud and pointed. This wasn't a place for backstabbers but an organization instated on truth and hardened honesty.

My eyes darted to Hawke.

His tawny stare was the severest of them all. Every ounce of judgment he'd once withheld from me poured from his scowl. He saw what everyone else saw; a junkie who'd been withered down to his last resort. I was an irredeemable mess that'd broken his back a hundred times over, but instead of resenting him for knowing the truth, I wanted to explain myself. For the hundredth time, I wanted to apologize and tell him I finally understood, and maybe, he could do me the justice of understanding _me_ long enough to let me speak.

He shifted his gaze from me to Anders, not saying a word.

"Should we get started?" Anders asked.

Hawke's disregard was like taking a baseball bat to the Hall of Mirrors.

The room was colder than I expected it to be considering all of the bodies perched on metal chairs. Hawke and Anders were seated at the table, tossing pencils back and forth while delving deep into conversations pertaining to political spheres I had no input on. Everyone else listened to them, and it was clear Hawke had entered CERCLE under false pretenses. He'd intended to be an anchor for respect, but he was just as involved as Anders. Something in me told me he would've done this, even if I'd stayed.

"I like speculative conspiracies as much as the next person," Anders began after a handed off theory about the Chantry bugging phones, "but we have concrete evidence that's going to change everything we've planned. I learned something last night that's forced me to rethink our original objective, and it's serious. Fenris, why don't you tell them what you know?"

An eruption of murmuring cleaned out the concentrated attentiveness.

"You want me to just tell all of them?" I cautiously asked.

My hardened stare shifted to Hawke's face once more, and he suddenly leaned forward, interested in what I had to say.

"That's why you're here, anyway."

"Right…" I trailed off and uncomfortably shifted in my chair.

All eyes were on me. There was no escape from the position I'd put myself in, and while I'd never committed to anything before, this had to be different.

"Danarius thinks – no, _knows_ – the government's working with the Qunari."

Hawke laughed a sharp laugh that dissolved into a scoff of disbelief as he leaned back from me, as if I'd offended his intellect. The reaction was unified, but I cut him a disappointed look that wiped his smug incredulity off his face.

"Did he just _tell_ you this?" Hawke sharply asked, tone red hot.

Someone muttered 'the power of pussy,' and Hawke and Anders both lurched for their drained coffee cups and chucked them toward the side of the room where the voice derived from.

I let it go.

"He did, and it's because I'm the best at what I do. I know the ins and outs of this business, and I've lived it closer than any of you, lied and helped murder people cleaner than any of you could ever hope to." At that, I felt like I was in an AA meeting, and I hovered over my knees while clasping my hands. "I have an in with the Qunari not many people have. Danarius planned on using me as a mole by having me temporarily switch alliances and feed them information about his circle, but in light of Karl and the plummet in local dealers, I knew I couldn't. It wouldn't have been right."

"Why should we believe you?" Hawke chimed in.

His question burned my throat like a surge of bile.

My look turned dark as people watched our exchange, contemplated the meaning of the entire conversation in reflection of our history.

"Because I'm the only one who knows how the Qunari work. You _need_ me to navigate what's going to come next if you continue with your objective. More people will die, but maybe it'll be less than expected. Maybe we won't have as many Karls, and you'll get the change all of you've been pining after. I'm more beneficial for you here than with the Qunari. Danarius will take care of his own and his own alone, but we can take care of this side of the city."

Hawke and Anders exchanged glances. Anders hadn't considered the possibility of me being untrustworthy, but he knew me better than anyone else. It was a difficult thing to own up to considering I didn't know the first thing about him. My narcissism had betrayed me.

"You're saying the Qunari are reaping the benefits of getting rid of the smaller dealers and level competitors," Anders said, more to make it clear to everyone else.

"How capitalism," Hawke joked, but no one laughed. He whistled and coughed. "Tough crowd."

"We're looking at taking down the Qunari first," I said.

"This going to turn into a gang war if we're not careful," Hawke snapped, and I knew that tone. He was nervous and on the defense.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Isabela would say," Anders unconvincingly muttered.

"That's not how we should be looking at this," he countered, and I tilted my head in agreement. "There has to be another way."

"If you say so," Anders said and then laughed, low and self-aggrandizing.

My lips parted, but I pursed them and leaned back.

We discussed what we knew about the Arishok, which unanimously dissolved into three adjectives; terrifying, mammoth and powerful. The Qunari in Kirkwall was a chapter in a much bigger organization only I'd been exposed to. I knew their codes, the signals they used.

"That helps," Hawke said and rubbed his chin. "We'll need you to teach us everything."

"Next meeting, though. We're out of time," Anders lamented and pushed back his chair.

Hoping that Hawke would linger as everyone gathered their things and paused to discuss what they'd learned, Hawke didn't cast me a second glance. Anders watched me rot in the sense of betrayal that wrapped its spindly fingers around my throat, but he stepped up beside me and settled his arm on my shoulder. My breathing was terse, the only physical manifestation of my internalized distress. When Anders' arm slid around my waist, I thought about lashing out, but I didn't. No one else in the world wanted to comfort me, and I was a beggar.

"He's bitter," Anders explained.

" _I_ am bitter."

"He's bitter because, for some reason, he still loves you."

"This isn't a fucking movie, Anders. He's just pissed."

He ruffled my hair and pushed me toward the door.

When we stepped into the hall, I spotted a figure on the opposite end of the hall. It was Hawke, and he was crouched down with his arms settled on his knees, forehead firmly pressed against his arms with no one at his side. Anders felt me gravitate in his direction, but he tugged me back and mouthed 'no.'

"You couldn't do anything worse right now," he promised. "You don't know how angry he is with you. He'd hurt you."

"Hawke would never – "

"He _would_ hurt _you_."

We left Hawke to handle his grief, and Anders told me I needed to eat.

CERCLE was known for two things; politics and parties.

This made for a lot of fistfights.

Anders' apartment had seating, but it wasn't party ideal. The roost where CERCLE gathered was a tiny house that never took down its Christmas lights. It was a tattered starter home with padded basement walls meant to block out heavy music, sometimes even live music. The back porch - the center of their world - was where hordes gathered to smoke, hold red solo cups and loudly talk over their music as they made 'lasting connections.' Most of the time, they bitched about music and how impossible it was to make a decent wage, but sometimes, they talked about their majors, partners (mostly girlfriends) and made fun of one another.

I arrived there with Anders a week after my meeting, having taken up residency with him in a strange cohabiting that shouldn't have even occurred since I had my room at Isabela's.

"If someone says shit to you about being trans, then just tell Hawke or me."

"I can handle myself," I said, not flinching when someone double my height strode past.

"They're gonna fuck with you."

"Are you _really_ going to act like I've never dealt with it before?"

The topic unnerved me, which was why I distanced myself from Anders in search of fridge to put our case of beer in. We'd taped a note to the front, threatening the entire house's existence if someone drank from our pack. I spotted Merrill across the room, and her eyes bugged as soon as she turned and saw me. She excitedly waved and darted toward the fridge.

"You're actually _okay_. We've been _so_ worried. Hawke thought you were dead, but I knew you weren't that stupid. Not that you're stupid to begin with. You're actually very smart."

"Hi, Merrill," I said wanly, but I checked myself. "It's nice to see you, too."

She didn't bother hiding her surprise, but the surprise dipped into a warm smile. I put the beer in the fridge and then handed her one before pulling the tab on my own. This peace offering seemed to lift her soul twenty feet, but her eyes whizzed toward my jacket. I'd spent the week customizing it myself; something I hated to admit had been an enjoyable way to lose time. It was fashioned with sharp, gold studs and patches boldly exclaiming visceral fearlessness with wolf skulls and ripped out teeth. I'd plucked out the 'FUCK THE CHANTRY' patch and brought it to the bottom of the backing and made the central focus white capital letters that read 'property of no one.'

"I like the jacket," she said and I appreciated how she didn't make any rude comments.

"I consider it a work in progress."

"Hawke's here," she said and glanced to the side as if I wouldn't read into what she meant. "I think he's mad at you, but it wouldn't hurt to say hello. He's out back, smoking. I hate that nasty habit, but you all do it. Must not be bad to kiss if it all tastes the same. That – _oh_ , sounds like I'm thinking about Hawke and you kissing. I'm not. I've seen that enough. Heard other things, too. Constantly, at one point."

We stared at one another.

"Thanks for the beer, Fenris," she quickly added and then practically jogged away in her humiliation.

After talking to her, I needed a cigarette. This lead me to push past people, casually nodding at those I knew who thought to shout my name. I eventually appeared on the crowded porch where people were shivering and plopped down in an endless stream of lawn chairs. The fire pit was ablaze, and somehow, Anders had already made his way to Hawke's side. They were laughing about something Hawke had said. Undeniably, I was left to feel out of place, but an arm suddenly hooked with mine, and I looked over to see Merrill, again.

"Are you okay? You look pale."

It was the worst question.

"Don't worry," she said, encouraging me to move forward toward the fire. "It's cold. I know."

Merrill persistently called herself stupid, but she wasn't. She smelled my relapse and was being kind about it in a way I didn't deserve. I'd been reflexively terrible to her ever since discovering she'd joined CERCLE. Many didn't know she was an active member, but there was a reason for it. Her connections were outrageous, and the less people could trace to her, aside from her persistent charity work, then the better. Anders and Merrill firmly believed in the same things, and it mostly dwindled down to the idea of helping the people.

"Look at who I found," Merrill said in a singsong voice.

"Is that _Fenris_?"

Isabela's voice rang through me like a miracle, and when I turned and saw her, it took all of my self-restraint not to push her into the fire for not telling me where she'd gone. She looked as if nothing excruciating had happened to her, but I didn't have time to interrogate her. Isabela leaned over and pushed back my bangs so that she could firmly kiss me on the forehead.

Hawke didn't look toward us, but he did shift and rub the back of his neck at Isabela's next comment.

"Is that a CERCLE jacket? What did Hawke bribe you with?"

"Nothing," Anders interjected. "He showed up on his own."

"Mother Mary's fuzzy thighs, I'm looking at a miracle," Isabela's joy was suddenly torn in two at the remembrance of where I'd gone. "I'll kick your bits inside out later."

As warm as the idea of truly being missed made me, the want for Hawke to just look at me right then was suffocating. Everything about him resonated, and I wanted that honey stare to melt on me again, his fingers to reach out and tug me toward him with that characteristic laugh that filled all of his features down to every last freckle.

Hawke looked so different to me, suddenly. He'd always been human, magnificently human, but suddenly knowing whom he was at his core left me riddled with a sense that I was in the presence of a quiet deity. I wanted to believe we were equals, which wasn't how I'd viewed us before. Until the journal, I'd put my situation above his.

"Someone told me you packed thirty thousand over the border recently," Isabela said and ran her fist up and down along my back. "Tell me it's true."

"It's true," I confirmed and took a sip.

Hawke scoffed but didn't say anything.

I flitted my gaze toward his face, and he laughed.

"Do you have something to say, Hawke?"

"No," he lithely snapped back and finally shot me a look. It was as taciturn as it'd been before, liquid nitrogen. Hawke licked one of his canines and then rolled his jaw in that way that let me know he was boiling. The anger broke into a soft chuckle that sounded dangerous. "It's just stupid. That's all."

"Stupid," I repeated coldly and pulled from Isabela's touch to face Hawke. He was calling me stupid, of all things. "Stupid like how you've had other people do the same for you or stupid because you've never made that much money before?"

Hawke stepped toward me, and I challenged him by stepping toward him with the same amount of space.

"Don't start," Isabela groaned. "If you have to, then go ruin everyone else's good time in one of the guest rooms, the bathroom, a black hole…"

"Do you have something you need to get off your chest?" I asked and Anders whistled.

"I don't have much to say to you anymore."

"Then act like it," I managed through adrenaline shakes.

That didn't even make sense. He'd done fine acting like he didn't want to talk. I was the one who needed him. Hawke had never needed me.

He licked between his lips, and when I saw the pain on his face, my features softened. We looked at one another, and when it was just my chest heaving and his caving expression, I realized I'd missed not just the man who could push my ankles to my ears, but also, my best friend. Hawke was so many things to me no one seemed to understand. Most seemed to find us shallow.

Anders had kept me on binges but Hawke had dragged me off them, letting me kick and scream while he cleaned up my vomit. I'd sat before him and sweated it out. I'd ask him to kill me, told him I hated him for letting me hurt, and he'd tolerated me from start to finish. No one had ever loved me as much as he had. No one had wanted as much for me.

"I have a lot to say," I admitted.

"That's a first," Hawke mumbled, and I knew he didn't want to talk about it in front of everyone else either. "Let's go inside. This isn't any of their fuckin' business."

I handed my newly lit cigarette to Isabela and followed Hawke toward the house. He glanced at my beer and wrinkled his nose in disdain.

"You're drinking that PBR shit. Must be stayin' with Anders again, eh?"

"It's okay."

"Don't disappoint me further, baby."

The guest room was spoken for, but the master bedroom's bathroom wasn't. He let me step inside first and then locked the door behind us so no one would walk in.

"You've got five minutes, Fenris. I can't even stand to look at your mug right now."

My grip settled on the bathroom sink's tacky pink counter, and I squeezed it tight. There were a thousand thoughts circling the drain, but a desperate apology wouldn't be enough. Hawke would've left me begging, obliterated on my knees, if I'd only apologized.

"I know everything," I started, blundering before I was ten seconds in. Hawke didn't seem to understand what I meant by _everything_. He only blinked. "I've been wronged without much mercy from the supposed balance of the universe, but I've also been wrong. I have been _very_ wrong, but mostly, wrong to you. It's never been because I don't love you or appreciate you, but I've never been given much reason to trust the world we live in. You don't understand how much lenience you get because you're attractive and biologically male. You make the rules, Hawke. I follow them because I don't have a choice, and I want a fucking choice. Most of all, I want you to listen to me, but now I know that goes both ways. I've never listened to you."

"You think, Pretty Boy?"

"I know about the cancer."

He straightened his shoulders. Hawke exhaled, hard.

"Who told you?"

"It doesn't matter."

When we should've been pointing the finger and screaming until someone started stripping the other, we were speaking to one another, entirely hands off.

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?" I asked, and it was impossible to hide my accusation. "I said so many things, thought so many terrible things about us, because I didn't know."

"You were dealing with some serious shit, Fenris. That wouldn't have been fair to you."

"I _love_ you," I breathed. "You wanted to buy a house together, but you were going to leave that one out? Were you waiting for the honeymoon?"

"Don't be a fuckin' tease. You wouldn't have married me."

"You clearly don't know how I feel about you."

"And you're gonna act like that's my fault? You just spent a month with a man who beats your ass, probably sucking his dick, as if that was a better option than being here with me and our friends. We've taken care of you. We were good to you. We're _still_ good to you, and for what? You've got to _earn_ love, baby. You don't just get it because you're cute and clever, which you are, but you're kinda a nightmare for me right now. You broke my heart, and I've always tried to understand where it all comes from. I thought I did, and for a long time."

"Cancer wasn't a choice. I made the choice to be a junkie. Hawke," I paused and didn't know what else to say, "I could've been better. You had no reason to take my shit."

"You know what else wasn't a choice? Being poor, being born desperate and at the mercy of anyone who'd throw you a bone. You're a junkie because that's what the world expects from someone who's mother was also an unwilling prostitute."

"I could've found another way. I didn't have to be like her."

"If I thought the cycle of poverty was that simple to escape, then I wouldn't be in CERCLE. You hate this organization, but it always made me think of you. People don't deserve this life. People don't deserve to be beaten down for being a part of a something society set up for them before they were even a twinkle in someone's eye. Danarius aside, there are other things," he said and cleared his throat to take a moment. "I really doubt you woke up one morning wanting to feel the way you do about that gender of yours. You know, on top of everything else. You can't belittle your problems for mine and think it'll make it all better."

"I want to take back everything I said to you."

"We can't pretend none of this has happened. It'd mean erasing the good, and you're the greatest good I've ever had."

My mouth soured.

"It's a terrible time to lie."

"Which is how you know I'm telling the truth."

He slowly stepped toward me and reached for the side of my face. No one should've been able to touch me without my skin crawling, but he was an exception. He'd always been the exception, even when I was at my worst.

Hawke leaned forward as I touched the hem of his jacket and pulled him closer. The conversation was something we should've had years ago. He'd always understood, but I'd been too lost in myself to see how smart he was underneath the ham-fisted accent and crude jokes. He was more than a heated ventilation system for me, but my mind still wandered to how good it felt to have someone touch me while loving me. There was an incredible difference.

At first, he couldn't get me to look directly at him anymore, but then his mouth tenderly pressed against mine. It redirected me toward him, and I was suddenly starved. Maybe he'd meant for it to be light, something along the lines of a polite farewell, but he groaned and then so did I. There'd never be someone like him, and my selfishness was draining him from me.

"We're not getting back together."

"I know," I lied and weakly kissed him back.

"You have to take care of yourself on your terms. I can't make you better."

"Don't tell me love isn't enough anymore."

"It's not."

He caught me by my armpits and lifted me onto the sink. My hands snapped out to begin undoing his belt and pushing open those dark fitted jeans that tended to leave little to the imagination, but my hands weren't the only ones busy. Hawke had gone to shove my jacket off, but he looked at me, thought better and then shot straight for my leggings.

"You like the leather?" I playfully jabbed. "Should I take my shirt off and put the jacket back on for you?"

"Don't if you want me to get far enough to get it in."

"You're turning this into a challenge."

Hawke pointedly jerked the leggings down, but he laughed in spite of himself. While he wrestled them off my thighs, my hands found him half-hard and without briefs on. Instead of immediately pumping him to get to the point, my fingers pushed up into his happy trail and then toward his hairy chest beneath his shirt. He whistled when my naked hips naturally rolled toward him, encouraging him to touch me however he wanted.

His fingers traced down my labia, spreading my folds to reveal the pink heart-shaped flesh he tenderly rubbed with the tip of his thumb.

"Still good enough or you?" I asked only to yelp when he playfully slapped between my thighs once, twice and then until I groaned and said his name. "You're an asshole."

"There we go," he murmured and dug the condom out of his wallet.

"I'm on birth control," I thickly said as he rolled it on and snapped the tip.

"It's better this way, not because of you. It's me."

That surprised me, but I wasn't bothered enough to ask questions.

Hawke caught my thighs and tugged me forward. I encircled my arms around his neck and looked down between us while wrapping my bare thighs around his hips.

He lined up with me, and I was so excited my thighs were shaking. Hawke noticed and kissed at the shell of my ear before saying my name. Wet walls contracted, and I sobbed out his first name, the rare 'Garrett,' when he thickly pushed inside, stretching me wide open with only the slightest resistance. It was enough to feel perfectly fitted, leaving me filled.

"Does that feel good?" he muttered in my ear and thrust hard, knocking the air out of me as I clung to the back of his jacket. We were too sober for what we were doing.

"Yes," I chanted heavily. "Yes, yes, _yes_."

My back pressed against the mirror and Hawke leaned in to suck at my neck, engaging me by petting my clit faster and faster with every intensified cry.

There was a knock on the door, but Hawke didn't break rhythm. While our sex had always been good, we both knew it was rare for me to open up to him so quickly when sober, and he wasn't going to waste the good moment on someone who could take a piss outside.

"God, no one's like you," I panted and slid both hands down either side of his face. The unapologetic smack of skin built into a numbed sound while he pounded into me, animalistic in his grunting and vocal enough to build plumes of volcanic heat behind my navel. "Nh, _Hawke_ …"

We kissed with apologetic muttering and declarations of love we'd pretend were unrequited after he came inside that latex, but that didn't stop him from pulling me off the sink and turning me around so he could bend me over. I hit the acrylic countertop with an appreciative sigh and smiled to myself when he pushed inside. Hawke shoved up the back of my shirt and jacket. I cooed when he gripped one of my shoulders to anchor me into his pummeling, but the coo morphed into a yell.

"Anders is…" I stopped mid-sentence to moan into my arm. "…is going to kill us."

"We'll just invite him to join next time."

When my walls sharply contracted, Hawke chuckled and leaned over to talk in my ear.

"Is that what you want?" he taunted and went from fluid driving to strident, merciless sheathing that locked my knees. By the raggedness of his breathing, I could tell he wasn't the only one intrigued by the fantasy. "Tell me, Fenris."

"I'm going to come!" I suddenly cried out and Hawke went so slow he nearly stopped, but it made worse. My back arched down and I hiked one of my knees up onto the sink.

"Don't come until you tell me," he commanded, sounding deadly.

Having avoided it until then, I glanced into the mirror to give him eye contact, and he slowly slid inside of me again, smiling in that self-satisfied way when I inhaled, hard.

"Yes," I said and nearly choked on my word. I smacked my hand against the hard surface with a defeated whimper. "I want it. I want you both to fuck me."

We returned to our previous speed, rutting like animals in heat until we both finished within seconds of one another. Me kissing him hard over my shoulder while he vigorously rubbed my swollen clit, Hawke was significantly gentler once he'd managed to make me confess to what we'd both known for too long.

Hawke finished inside the rubber, but instead of letting him take it off himself and toss it, I knelt down, removed it for him and sucked him clean. The favor was returned with his tongue and my thighs mirroring either side of his head, and I considered us both satisfied when he helped me back into my leggings.

"I want to again," I sleepily muttered.

"You're insatiable," Hawke said, laughing through his disbelief.

The party was still going when we returned to the living room, a little sweaty, but otherwise, unassuming. Hawke sought out beer for the both of us, and it was obvious he was still in a euphoric state when we wandered back onto the porch. He kept an arm wrapped around my shoulders, wordless, but possessive in that soft way that didn't bother me.

I hadn't finished my beer when we saw the blue lights.

"This can't be real," Hawke said and dropped his arm from me. "Who called the fucking cops?"

When two people sprinted out the backdoor, across the porch and leapt toward the privacy fence to climb over it, I decided Hawke was very wrong. It was very real.

"Scatter," he ordered, as if he'd done this multiple times before.

My incredulous look was shut down by his reach for my beer and sudden push toward the stairs.

"Meet me back at the Hanged Man, but don't follow me."

It dawned on me that this was serious, and all the busted parties from high school returned to me, except this was significantly different. The house was loaded with hard drugs, and I was carrying. Hawke knew me too well to assume differently, and I didn't need another order to get me tearing across the yard and leaping for the fence so that I could use my upper body strength to tug myself over and off the property.

I landed on the ground with a dead drop but recovered. Knowing the police, I ran the opposite direction of everyone else. Most of CERCLE was heading into the woods, but that was too obvious. It was dark, foggy thanks to our city's seaside disposition. Within minutes my lungs burned from running through the cold. I was sprinting through backyards, avoiding barking dogs and torpidly heaving myself over fence after fence until I was certain my arms would fall off.

Even when I reached a sidewalk, I didn't stop running. I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone had followed me, but this was my first mistake.

I slammed directly into a uniform's chest and promptly landed flat on my ass.

Knocking my head against concrete, I muttered a sharp 'fuck' from the pain and caught both sides of my skull.

The police officer seemed just as startled as I was, and he leaned over me to inspect my dazed body only to reach down with large, strong hands. He attempted to tug me to my feet, and I was waiting for the clink of cuffs, but nothing came. I swayed and nodded my head to make sure my brain was still attached, but then stopped when I saw his face.

Piercing blue eyes met mine, and I breathed in deep.

"Only divine intervention could be responsible for us meeting again."


	11. Coffee II.

"I would challenge Ernest Hemingway to meet me in the pit, but he would kick my ass."

"The idea of you dropping out of university because you couldn't fight every author you read sits well with me."

"That's what I'm going to start telling people. It was cheaper to drop out than travel around the world for a Spit On Their Graves marathon."

"I have faith you're above spitting on graves."

"But have you _read_ the English literary canon?"

Divine intervention is defined as a miracle caused by a deity's supposed active involvement in the human world. Nothing unsettles me more than not being allowed to take credit for all the involvement I've had in my fight for autonomy, but smacking chest first into Sebastian Vael realigned my idea of The Higher Power.

There are days when I tell myself I've lived a lonely life. Where this idea manifests could easily be linked to my ability to capitalize on self-loathing. The truth behind my isolation feels absolute, but then there are times when the oppressive miasma drifts apart like curtains. I'm all at once aware of the many people I've met, given my time to and taken time from, and suddenly, I understand that I'm far more human than I could've ever hoped to be. Loneliness, though not always, tends to be cruelly self-implemented. Implemented in the way that one's self doesn't have as much control over their self-reflection as they'd hope to.

"It's been so long," Sebastian said. "I can't believe you're in Lowtown."

"Did you think I'd go down in Hightown with the rest of them?"

"Never," he said quickly, confident. "I don't remember what I expected, but they were always somewhere along the lines of Greatness. You've always had more heart than you give yourself credit for."

"You've always thought too highly of me. Even so, I find it fitting we ended up on opposite sides of the glass."

"I'd like to call it a fence."

My fingertips scraped along the underside of a mailbox. Winter was in the air, the sharpness scraping my lungs. It was supposed to snow that week.

"Why a fence?"

"We shouldn't have to injure ourselves in the process of reaching out to one another."

" _Oh_ ," I said, but my smile was nearing smug, intentionally aloof. "I see."

Where does one begin to describe Sebastian?

Our history is skewed by my desperation to pretend I hadn't thrown him under the bus in the process of understanding what I stood for. I suppose traditionally handsome would work, but that's hardly what concerned me when it came to him. Striking blue eyes, dark brown hair and a gallant air; a prince.

Not always a cop, we'd once painted Hightown red with unfathomable financial stability backing our every move. Sebastian had been born into old money; I'd been whored into new money. The social circles we ran in were disdained by our friendship, but he was bored and felt neglected. At the time, my attention was so ideal for him the preoccupation between us had rang too hard for most. I could still hear the old rumors wafting around us as we walked side-by-side along one of Lowtown's grittier blocks, three years later. I considered all of them; the false ones, the true ones, and the ones we weren't even sure were fact or fiction.

His father hardly knew how to love him, and Danarius didn't love me. Abandonment set us on fire, and that profound night outside of Viscount's Keep, a lustrous bar exclusive to Hightown, haunted me through college, into Hawke's bed and under CERCLE.

"CERCLE is causing unrest," Sebastian confessed and reached for one of the spikes on my black jacket. He chuckled at the getup. "I like you in your work clothes."

I side eyed him, frowning. "Don't mock me. I mock myself enough."

"I'm complimenting you, Fenris."

"Tell me about the _unrest_. That was ambiguous."

Ominous, even.

"I'm not allowed to give you details. I hold myself to a standard, as I know you wouldn't give me details about CERCLE. To get to the point, you've been noticed. Individually, everyone's been noticed, and that's something to consider going into this organization. I've loathed Anders since he started giving us trouble. He doesn't understand how to be intersectional, and I can't give him an ounce of my respect for being a narrow man."

"You know Anders," I started, not sure why I was surprised.

"Anders doesn't let himself not be known. He just doesn't let himself get caught." Sebastian led me away from a gate where a barking dog growled. "He's smarter than he looks…"

I laughed at that and Sebastian did his best not to smile.

"…and those are the most dangerous," he dully finished.

"Do you know Garrett Hawke?" I asked, suddenly curious.

"What a question," he mused. "Who doesn't know that man? What've they started calling him lately? Something about being a champion."

Easily lost in my own head, sometimes I forgot Hawke was a public figure.

"But _personally_ , do you know him personally?"

"You look nervous," Sebastian observed, being calm and anything but accusatory. "I've never thought there was room for judgment between us. I know Hawke personally, but that's because he's earned a commendable amount of respect from me. We're both Catholic. We attend the same church between Lowtown and Hightown. We have for years."

It took everything I had not to cross my eyes.

"I was seeing him," I admitted.

Sebastian was unmoved. "Your tense change sounds recent."

I rubbed along my throat, fingering the wormy scar tissue that splayed into spidery legs. I'd had breakup sex literally an hour ago. "It was a recent breakup."

"I'm more surprised by him than you."

"What do you mean?" I asked and noticed how my throat wanted to close.

"He's older than you by a few years."

It was something no one talked about. I was the youngest in our friend group, the only one under twenty-five years old. It'd never been a blatant problem between Hawke and I, but there'd been moments when I could feel him applying that calm look. It was a look that radiated patience and the constant reminder that I didn't have the life experiences he had for technical adulthood, but it rarely happened. Mostly because I'd lived enough life for someone double my age, and Hawke respected me for it. He believed I had interesting things to say.

"We don't consider it an issue."

Sebastian raised an eyebrow but didn't speak his mind.

"Would you like a ride home?"

"Actually," I started and felt strange, the next question foreign. "Are you working all night?"

"You could call me off the clock."

"Do you want to go to the Hanged Man?" I mustered up the next words. "With me?"

Taking a cop into CERCLE panic was ignorant, especially considering I'd just spread my legs for Hawke. I still felt our fuck when I sat down in the car's passenger seat. The soft ache between my legs was comfortable, reconnected me to the moment. It reminded me to check my phone where I found messages from Hawke, Anders and Isabela, all in that order of delivery. They basically said the same thing with identical inflection.

_Are you okay?_

Sebastian changed into civilian clothing at his place, letting me wait outside. We took his regular car to the pub, and once I'd shaken off my nerves, he followed me into the Hanged Man. The place had morphed into an impromptu party during our extended walk and wait at his apartment. I was surprised by the enclosure of relieved CERCLE members who'd thought I'd been caught, but Hawke was one of the few who hardly seemed concerned. He was more concentrated on the guitar hanging low across his navel than my presence. Our eyes met, he smiled at me, and I tried my hardest not to return it. The idea of him not caring was supposed to fall numb on me, but it was greeted with my injured sniff and nostril flare.

Until I heard the twang of his guitar, that is.

"I told them you weren't caught," Hawke called out and began to play a song significantly more infuriating than _Galway Girl_.

"You're playing that song to humiliate me."

His eyes flitted toward Sebastian who was lingering close to my side.

"Do you want me to confirm that? Some things are better left unsaid," he held and then flashed me a full teeth smile I wrinkled my nose at. "Have you ever told anyone that story?"

"I love this story," Anders said, appearing behind the bar with a tub of ice.

"It's not a story you tell when everyone was there," I snapped and stepped toward him while he continued to strum out the chords to the infamous song.

"Officer Vael doesn't know."

Anders suddenly realized who was beside me, and I got an icy look in response. I didn't flinch. Instead, I returned it.

"We confess our shortcomings as man to the same priest," Hawke reassured Anders. "Plus, I know enough about him to ruin his life if he attempted to instate anything."

Sebastian laughed at that, and a surreal cloud overwhelmed me knowing that Hawke, Anders and Sebastian were in the same room with me. There were plenty of levels to that I'd never considered, mostly because the odds of us coming together like a sick convention for my life's failings had never occurred to me as possible.

Hawke poured Sebastian a beer as a peace offering.

"Do you two know one another or did you run into each other outside?" Anders curtly asked and violently stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray we used afterhours.

"I'm ready to tell that story now," I quickly announced and stepped up to Hawke with my fresh beer in hand. He smiled up at me and continued to strum, which in turn, made me smile. I hated him for it and sipped from my tall glass. "Krispy Kreme white boy…"

"It's not my fault you like white boys."

"It's not my fault only white boys like me."

Hawke laughed and it was as if we'd never fought.

"It was last Christmas Eve. Hawke was playing his annoying instrument, but all he wanted to play were archaic Christmas songs and ruin the mood. No one wanted to challenge him because he was drunk and determined, but Hawke is the least threatening person I know, so I decided to fix it for the sake of Christmas miracles."

"You were shit faced yourself," Hawke reminded me, and everyone else. "That was the same night you told Isabela to sit on your face and…"

"Anyway, so I started yelling at him and called him a donut. That's it. "

"Liar," Anders snapped and pointed at me with his beer glass, sloshing. "Your exact words were…"

And Hawke joined him, the two having repeated the phrase back and forth every single day for a month. They began smacking their hands against the bar in between words.

"Shut that Rudolph shit up, you motherfucking white glazed, Krispy Kreme for a _man_ and play me some _goddamn_ music."

"Fenris wouldn't say that," Sebastian said, but he wasn't sure. He paused. "Fenris would say that."

Hawke started outright strumming the Wild Cherry song I'd been avoiding acknowledging, and I walked away from him.

"But then I played this song, and he knew every word."

" _Every_ word," Anders added. "Drunk Fenris is my preferred Fenris."

"The best part was when he serenaded me. Cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, shouting at me to play that funky music."

"I don't serenade," I muttered and continued sipping my beer, having taken a seat beside Sebastian who was amused.

"Did you succeed?" Sebastian asked.

"I definitely did that night."

"You and only you."

Anders guffawed and Hawke looked at me as if I'd betrayed him.

Because my friends were there, Sebastian and I didn't have much time to talk. He asked me about whether or not I planned on returning to school, which I refused to discuss, and then politely asked about the Hanged Man. Truthfully, I wanted to talk about him. I was sick of myself, the thoughts circulating through my head without reprieve. I wanted to know about his life, who he was seeing, what it was like being sent into the police academy. He'd been a hair away from being busted alongside me, and when his father found out, he gave him an ultimatum. Join the police academy or lose your entire trust fund. I blamed myself, but the last time we'd talked, Sebastian reassured me that he'd made the choice to carry our blow.

"They're protective," Sebastian observed, glancing over his shoulder. Anders and Hawke were mingling with others, but they didn't stray.

"Possessive would be the word."

"Possessive would be one of them telling me to leave."

"The night's young."

Neither of them asked Sebastian to leave, and I even managed to get Sebastian to tell me how he felt about the police force.

"It makes me happy. I've found peace there. Even with punishment lifted, I plan to make a career out of it. I don't think people should have to suffer the way you have."

"Do you remember what you said outside of Viscount's Keep?" I asked, lowering my voice and not daring to make eye contact with Hawke or Anders. "It's been years, but…"

"It still stands, Fenris. It's never not."

Sebastian left when the party threatened to become illegal, and I turned in for the night. Anders' and Isabela's house was an option, but I made a pot of coffee in Hawke's apartment, instead. Everything smelled the same, looked the same. The pictures of us hadn't been removed from the walls and my incense burner sat askew beside his handmade ashtray. It was dark, but the streetlights and orange oven light gave off enough glow for me to comfortably pour cream and sugar into a chipped mug.

Pig, Hawke's one true love, moseyed up to me and pressed his watermelon head against my thigh. If a dog breed could be inspired by a meatloaf, then Pig's breed would've been in a spread for Southern Living.

I heard Hawke's boots climbing the stairs and resigned myself to another confrontation. He appeared, seemed surprised to see me, and shucked off his shoes.

"Ex-boyfriend in my apartment," he said, but it wasn't venomous. It was fact.

Hawke had never referred to me as that before. It stung, and I couldn't hide that it did. I looked away from him, and he did the same. We were both being remorseful.

"I want my job back."

"I can't have you around here." He sounded sharp, as if he'd been waiting for me to ask. "I can't keep you around me when I know this cycle is going to continue. Isn't CERCLE enough? We're going to see one another constantly, and – "

"It's not about _you_. I need _money_."

This was a lie. I had a bag full of cash that could float me for months. What I needed was routine and my friends.

"Danarius always gives you money when you bounce between us. What'd you do, Fenris? Did you snort all of it? We're not doing this again. I got you clean once."

"It's none of your business. I know how this place works."

"And you know how _I_ work."

> _He knows how to work my heart. I can't decide whether or not he's being sincere or if he's looking for ways to pass the time in between classes and work. Without his druggy friends, I can tell he's bored. He's trying to figure out how to be his own person, and because I've been with him through this change, I'm afraid he's not gonna want to stick it out once he finds himself on the other side. He's fickle, cautious. I want to hate this kid._

We stared at one another, and Pig whined.

"We don't have to talk while I'm there."

"It's been a long night. I'm drunk and I wanna say some mean shit to you, Fenris."

He always pronounced the final three letters of my name like 'Reese,' and I didn't know why I was paying attention to that right then, but it trickled toward the front of my head.

"I'm going," I announced and downed the rest of the mug.

Hawke was a habit in himself.

I strode toward the door, tugging on my beanie and pointedly shoving past Hawke. Hawke's hand snapped out, and he caught my bicep, reeling me back but not against him. He kept a forearm's space between us, and once still, loosened his grip.

"I'm sorry about what happened in the bathroom. I shouldn't 'ave. That was cruel."

"Which part?" I asked and hated myself for being harsh.

He had every right to be furious with me.

"Mainly, fucking you. I'm not a good man, Fenris. I do what I can for you. I give it all I've got, and I have for years, but I'm not doing it for you anymore. There's got to be something wrong with me if you keep headin' out. If me taking you to Ireland to see my old man isn't enough to prove to you that I love you, then I think you're not ready to love anyone."

"You don't get to make that fucking choice."

"But I do, and I have."

'Fuck you,' was on the tip of my tongue, but I refrained.

I went to Isabela's that night, and she was surprised to see me, but she didn't seem to mind. She waved with a single hand and pushed a margarita toward me without asking. It was nearing dawn, and she'd already retired to pantless and braless state. 

I leaned over the countertop and pressed my forehead against its cool surface.

"I'm crazy," I said, hating the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. They were acrid, terrible words. "I don't understand what's wrong with me or why I can't decide on anything or anyone. I don't know who I am from one day to the next, and it's biting me in the ass. I don't want to be this person."

She stirred her drink with her finger and thought.

"Have you ever thought about living your own life?"

"What?"

"You were taught to love one person for years, and it was easy for you to delve back into loving one person again. It was probably comfortable. Hawke is one easy man to love, so I'm sure you've got it bad for the old guy, but how about you do what you need to for yourself? He's in the same boat as you, trying to sail the seas of your high strung loveliness..."

"You're slurring," I murmured.

"I'd have to be slurring to be this sentimental."

I didn't answer her question and Isabela told me to sleep with her that night, like old times. Dead on my feet, we went to her bedroom and collapsed on the cushy mattress with hardly any clothes on.

"It's only a bad storm, Fenris. Shit like this never lasts forever."

It was eight in the morning when I got a phone call from Hawke. We'd only been asleep for maybe three hours, and when I picked up, I grunted and rubbed my eyes free from crust, or I tried to. My motor skills were less than admirable.

"They arrested Merrill."

"What do you _mean_ they arrested Merrill? Didn't you do a head count?"

"They got her after she sent me the text saying she was fine and on her way home. I need you to cover her shift while I figure this out. Anders thinks they're baiting us with her."

"Let me call Sebastian."


	12. French 75

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of pregnancy mention in this story, but this is most definitely not a pregnancy story meant to dehumanize trans people. Being trans myself, I find this somehow becoming a constant topic in my life, and I think it's one of the things people overlook when you're trans and involved with cis men - it's a hard topic, so I'm not condemning the overlook at all. But just because you identify as a man doesn't mean the experiences you gained while being socialized as a woman go away, especially when you're hardly passing. I'm asking those who read this and notice the reoccurring theme take that into consideration. It's horrifying and a huge problem, but I know it can easily be misconstrued as fetishization while in a fandom work.

There's nothing like living in the perpetual state of a nighttime road trip after a screaming match.

The sense of existing where I wanted to stand like a mountain without dreading the backlash, no longer anticipating hands dragging their twigs along the ravines of my ribcage before clamping like a flytrap. A mountain; I wanted to be my own pillar of strength and not a moth who'd married a light. That tired succumbing where I sank in the backseat of my car after thinking about sucking Hawke off, and instead of gassing myself in a closed garage, thought – _God, I have to keep living. God, I'm so tired, but God, God, God._

 _Done_ , but not in the sense of finished.

Done, as in, I was done with the curvature of my soul and it was time to reconfigure its blueprints. As in, the world was broad and so were my white rage abilities. Things are never finite until you erode yourself down to a bone china cup and combust, and I was not finite. I was the constitution of diamonds and the blood dispersed from eight hours of birth. My mother was whore, and so was I, but I would not end in blood.

Nor would I end in my own vomit, overdosed and dead.

His fingertips were not oil on my ocean.

Scared and twenty-three with enough forfeiture to breach a country, I wanted _out_. The airiness of this clicked on and off like a furnace. Some days it was stronger than others, a white noise that lulled me to sleep with promises of rejuvenation. But then, sometimes, even following the same day, there were afternoons when I couldn't imagine caring either way.

It was one of those afternoons. 

"Could you at least try to put some clothes on?"

" _Why_ would I do that?"

It was snowing, and I'd enclosed myself in Anders' apartment for the sake of removing myself from Isabela's prying eyes. We were on his couch. It was the one with the biggest cigarette burns and the worst blue paisley pattern, except I was upside down with my legs dangling over the back, and he was sprawled out on the other two-thirds. We were watching early-nineties anime on his old box television, something he'd prompted on a nostalgic whim.

I dipped a halved rice cake into a jar of peanut butter and crunched. While I wasn't wearing pants, Anders had succumbed to the evening in sweats with a six-pack of PBR at his feet. We were bored. I was surprised we hadn't had sex yet.

"You'll get sick," Anders offered.

I shrugged, limply. "I don't care."

"Who do you think'll be the one taking care of you if you get the flu?"

Uninterested in watching a machinery-embossed alien controlled by a teenager blow through an urban setting, I spread my thighs open. "Smack it."

Anders dismissed me with a sip but surprised me by reaching over and whacking my thigh. I choked on my bite and there was an explosion on screen.

"Have you heard from that pig of yours yet?"

"Hawke hasn't talked to me since Merrill's shift needed to be covered."

Anders hissed at the insult and licked his upper-lip in contemplation. He raised his hand for a high-five, and I met it with a stinging clap. "I'll give you that one."

"Sebastian says that once we can post bail—if we even need to—she'll be out. Whenever that happens."

"Her bail is going to drain us."

"Varric and Hawke mentioned covering it, I think."

"They've already held her for too long on nothing. It's _illegal_." He brought the edge of his can to his lips but let it hover; thumb toying with the tab. A semi-truck drove by and its headlights bled shadows across the room. I licked peanut butter off my thumb and scraped the underneath of my nail with my bottom teeth, not missing his judgmental leer. "It's been three days, and they have _nothing_ on her. She wasn't even carrying. This is lowbrow taunting."

"Then don't fall for the bait. Merrill won't rot."

His sip was more like a quick slurp. Anders meaningfully shifted to face me, and before he said it, I knew what was coming. "You wouldn't be this calm if you were in a cell. You don't know what it's like…"

I shifted my shoulders and dramatically heaved. "And so we must have this conversation _again_."

"Not all of us had someone who could make a phone call before we were even in the back of a police car."

"Are you implying I should be _thankful_?" Throwing my legs from the back of the couch onto its arm, I sat up and spun the lid shut on the peanut butter jar. "Danarius wanted to keep me out of jail because, otherwise, I was useless to him. Those weren't freedom gestures. Those were logs to toss onto the fire he lived to burn me with. I paid for those phone calls in ways you can't imagine. If you had an inkling of an idea what it was like…"

"Poetic, Fenris. But that still doesn't mean you know what it's like. That's the fact of the matter." He reached for me when I stood but thought better of it. Had he touched me, then I would've punched him. "I'm not discrediting whatever he did to you, but you don't know what it's like to be jailed. In the most literal sense, you do not _know_. You can't give me an opinion about how she's doing in there if you've never seen bars."

"Funny how you can say that to me, but when I attempt to say the same to you, I'm ostracized."

A text message appeared on Anders' phone, and Hawke's name popped up. Unfinished business aside, the situation CERCLE had found itself in took precedence over whatever squabble we were having. Our arguments were routine, a part of the very bricks that'd built our relationship. Anders unlocked his phone and flitted his stare over the words. He wrinkled his nose in frustration and pushed himself to his feet, kicking his ripped black pants in the air and catching them before nudging his boots together.

"What?" I asked, watching him change, forever unimpressed by his small ass. "Did they let her go?"

"You could summon the devil himself." Anders tossed my pants at me. They smacked against my face, making me swear. I tossed the peanut butter jar at him, and he stepped back to watch it collide with the wall. "We're meeting Hawke and Merrill at Black Emporium."

"I'm surprised you're not the one getting her."

He fished for his keys in his jacket pocket, found them and stuffed one fist into his jacket's arm. "If they even smelled me I'd be escorted behind bars."

"If you showered more often that wouldn't be a problem."

Anders tried to shove me over while I awkwardly stepped into my jeans with a concealed laugh, but he latched onto my bicep and balanced me before I hit the ground.

"Fuck off – " he started but stopped when I performed the blow job gesture and pressed my tongue to the inside of my cheek. "You've been around Hawke too long."

"But you _love_ Hawke."

Black Emporium was slow due to the weather. Hawke and Merrill bolted past the window Anders and I were seated beside, holding their beanies on and laughing at one another as they slipped along the sidewalk that still needed to be salted. They didn't stop running when Hawke flung open the door with snow in his beard. Merrill pointed us out while she pounded her shoes free of snow, and Hawke jogged in front of her, climbing onto the booth behind Anders and swinging his leg over to slide beside him with a hard plop. Anders grunted at the sudden bounce, but Hawke ignored it, drumming his hands along the edge of the table.

Our eyes met, and a surge of _want_ shaped a crater in my chest. Impossible, underserving _want_ that protested its title in screams. It pleaded to be called _need_.

Merrill's eyes brightened when she saw me. "I didn't know _you_ were coming."

"Neither did I," Hawke said in faux-cheer, but I didn't miss the nuance.

"I was at Anders, and Sebastian was the one who kept us updated. I figured it was appropriate."

"We should invite him out," Hawke suggested and Anders visibly tensed as he drank his beer. He'd been drinking all day. How he was sober baffled me. "Thank him for the insight."

Airless murk seeped into the space between Anders and me when my fingers slide across the screen to invite Sebastian. He responded quickly, letting me know he was right down the street and out of uniform. I'd caught him at a good time.

"How are you?" I asked Merrill. Somehow, this startled everyone at the table.

"It wasn't my first time in a holding cell," she admitted and then leaned over to press her cheek against mine. I puffed mine out to push her away, but she pressed back and made me involuntarily raspberry. "But thank you, Fenris. After a shower, I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" dug Anders coolly. "What did they want? Sebastian didn't give us exact details. All he told us was that you were doing well."

"Association they couldn't prove. Rattling on and on about CERCLE and what they knew, which was wrong. Most of it was wrong, anyway. Some things they said surprised me. I couldn't believe half of it because it was so violent." She stopped to acknowledge the waitress. Everyone at the table was drinking beer, barely contemplating the menu. "They insisted I'd have to give up information to them because we're looking at prison time."

"That's a bluff. I want the file they have on us," Anders suddenly announced. It wasn't a wishful thought. He meant it enough to make Hawke and I shift to face him.

"You're begging for the slammer, mate," Hawke said, dancing around the words 'fuck no.'

"They could be orchestrating an entire investigation built on tactful false evidence," Anders insisted and Merrill pressed her palm to her mouth, watching him closely.

"Sebastian," Anders started, but I interrupted him.

"I'm not compromising his job," I said too briskly. "He's been a good friend."

"He compromised himself by talking to you while Merrill was locked up. We already have him."

I felt the long free-fall in the pit of my stomach.

"You can't use him," I started, voice growing dark with realization. "You're not allowed. I won't let you use him for CERCLE's gain."

"What will you do, Fenris?" Anders asked, daring me to reply.

It took a moment for the threat to parse. The instinct to jab his skull off his spinal cord, boil it clean and use it as a soup bowl distilled and was replaced by a feral grunt.

"You're not using Sebastian," Hawke intervened, calm in all the tenseness. "Fenris contacted him without consulting CERCLE. He volunteered that aid. You don't get to be its keeper, not while I'm around."

" _Ah_ \- how like you, Hawke!"

Hawke raised an eyebrow in challenge, wordlessly goading Anders to go on.

"How like you to always put him before everything else."

"Maybe that's why we dated and you two didn't."

This was the moment when anyone with less sense would've laughed. Suddenly, I missed Varric. 

Anders' nose flared, creating star gates. "Has it ever occurred to you the world is more than one person?"

"The world is the people who impact mine and need me. I'm a part of CERCLE because you're my best friend who deserves a fair chance, not because I'm here to change the world."

Merrill and I exchanged a glance, me being stunned but maybe less so than her. Hawke wasn't one to discuss our relationship, let alone toss it in Anders' face. In retrospect, we were perpetually answering to people for our relationship. There were numerous reasons for this, but with certainty, one ingredient was that our friends only saw us use our energy on outbursts. Our good was private by my design. A malformed cake forgotten on the bakery shelf that'd been overfed with cream and strawberries, if you will. We were only good when given a chance. It'd never occurred to me that others had to see the inside to get why we kept at it.

"Impact yours," Anders went on with a mocking philosophical hum. "Clearly, whether or not it's negative or positive impact, doesn't matter to you."

"You sold me drugs while I was bleeding from my orifices," I said, but flat. Dead. "Don't herald yourself as a saint, Anders. You've impacted others negatively yourself."

"Now, now," Merrill interrupted and sipped her beer, "remember that we can't blame the dealer. We make the choice to ingest substances, don't we? I think that's how it goes."

"We have to have that duality to exist," Anders said and Hawke leaned back, finally looking at me with an arched eyebrow. My look mirrored his. We were tired. "I didn't make you a drug addict, Fenris. What good would've me denying you done? It would've made you sicker."

"We're off topic," Hawke said, lassoing the situation back into submission. "The point is, no one is going to be using Sebastian Vael as a mole."

"Well, good," said a divergent voice, too chipper and clean considering the gravity of the table. My blood vaporized. "Because I had no intentions of being one."

Sebastian reached for a wooden chair, deliberately scraping its legs as he shifted it to the end of the table with a pointed smack. Hawke waved and Anders stiffened.

"Conspiring would get all of us in trouble," Sebastian continued and ordered himself a drink. The waitress had stalked him to the table, his aspects that penetrating. We looked at one another and something in my lower abdomen enfolded. I imagined the starry-eyed waitress with her two globes for an ass had felt the same thing. "Hello, Fenris. Hawke, Merrill, and of course, Anders. I'm not happy about this either, to clarify. Disappointed, even."

Anders wasn't sold. Anders was also transparent. "There's an investigation going on."

"I've already said that, but that's all I can say. I don't have details."

Sebastian had the nerve to wink at me as if sharing an unspoken joke. Everyone saw, and my answer was lifting my brow and tearing my look from him, dismissively sipping my beer.

"They kept mentioning domestic terrorism to me," Merrill said, after thinking.

There was a pause at the table and then Anders snorted, muttering 'ridiculous' under his breath and adding, "Violence in the name of liberation cannot be put on the same serving platter as violence from oppressors. Those are buzzwords used to make people feel guilty, scared of a stigma that they don't belong to. That is not domestic terrorism. That's implementing change. We've all tensed at the word terrorist because that's what they _want_."

"But we're virtually nonviolent," Merrill continued. "Why would they ask that?"

My mouth turned to cotton. Rubbing at my temple while gazing past Hawke, I couldn't be bothered with the conversation because of the icepick chipping at my skull.

"It was wishful thinking," Anders reassured her. "A method to make you divulge more. To them, it seems like the next course of action."

"Is it?" I asked.

Anders turned toward me and he wrinkled his brow. It defined the wrinkles that'd permanently settled in his face, and I'd never considered just how much older than me he was until then.

"That's for them to decide."

But it wasn't. Like a vacuum, the oxygen vanished from the bar. It occurred to me that my brain had smudged out an important detail from weeks and weeks before.

"I'm going to Isabela's after this," I intoned, and the way my voice scraped along my throat on the way out gave away my uneasiness. It was a tactical error on my part that I couldn't take back, so instead, I followed through. "I have to grab something."

Hawke read my face like a book, started flipping pages with a questioning gaze I met with veiled panic. Sebastian had fortunately distracted Anders.

"You cannot involuntary involve the innocent," he prattled, but my head was as loud as boiler room, clanking with whistling steam.

Sebastian and Anders' ethical banter maintained throughout the rest of our drinks, rising and falling like waves, but otherwise, balanced. We bought Merrill dinner, Hawke insisting she eat more than just a couple bites, and then parted ways without mentioning Merrill's cross-examination again. Everyone was afraid of identifying as a terrorist. Anders wasn't wrong.

The snow was thick, ungodly and no longer powder, and iced to the point I could walk on it. The traction it gave me was why I suddenly ran. Icing my lungs, shaking them up from physical exertion, I was an arctic cocktail by the time I'd trudged onto Isabela's yard. My knees were soaked with a combination of black sludge and snow melted from my dying body heat, and I promised myself to grab my black leather gloves on the way out the next morning.

I nudged the door open with my side. My nose was wind-raw and translucent snot ran toward my chapped upper-lip. It stung whenever I attempted to swipe it away, and with a sigh of relief, I traipsed through the warm, dark living room. Bounding up the stairs, Isabela was loudly engaged with Zevran, but their rasping disappeared as soon as I shut my bedroom door behind me. There was a heady silence in the shambolic bedroom, and after a moment to gather myself, I refocused on the task I'd been mulling over for several minutes.

I need to find one thing: my phone.

Not the one vibrating in my jacket pocket, but the one Danarius stole from me. I'd tossed it into my bag, but through everything else, forgotten to charge it and check its state. After quick digging, I found it where I'd left it and dug its charger out of my desk drawer. Clearly having been dead for a while, I had to wait for it to turn back on.

It was the same suspense I'd felt during every pregnancy test I'd taken when living with Danarius. The neurotic pacing, picking up trivial items on my desk as if they could tell me the answer, flipping through books; nervous ticks that didn't calm me but made me more aware of the circle of hell I'd put myself in. The first one I'd taken when I was nineteen, and it'd ended in me being scraped a week later, never mentioned again. Danarius promised me it wouldn't be mentioned as a means to respect my identity, but in truth, it'd been because he didn't want to deal with the reality of the situation. I was organic matter, and that was too much for him.

The white light and fruit insignia appeared with a vestige of holy light.

The password had been removed, letting me know Danarius had managed access, but nothing seemed removed. The wallpaper was still Hawke, asleep, with his mabari lying beside him like a human being—his true mistress—and not a single app had been removed.

I thumbed through the pictures, heart lying like a feather at the returned content. All of which derived from a time when I'd believed I was conclusively happy. Not one picture expressed my discontentment, and the farther back the pictures went, the lighter they became. I'd taken most of them, eager to have a collection of images of people who loved me, who I loved.

There were only a handful of videos. The digital sex tape aside, Hawke had filmed several. In one, Varric and I were drunkenly playing a hand of cards, and I kept blatantly leaning over to read his hand. The night had wound down to the point he was letting me, feigning surprise when I managed to outwit his plays, and we kept referring to me as a 'genius.' The next was Hawke filming me on his chest, half-asleep and mumbling at him whenever he asked a question. Again, I was definitely drunk, but it was a low-key kind. We'd been drinking alone.

"I love you," he said, voice rumbling soft and low, but he laughed when I rubbed my nose all over his bicep. The video was only capturing the back of my head.

There was a stunted pause, and then groggily, "I love you, too. More than that baked potato I just ate."

"Incredible. Fenris, that sounds like a proposal. Actually the most meaningful thing you've ever said to me. Is this what twenty year long marriages are built on?"

I whacked his chest but then snorted through my own laugh. "That was a _well-prepared_ potato."

His hand reached for my hair, petting through it, and I visibly relaxed. Hawke was smiling. His eyes never lifted from my head, and the contemplation read plain as day on his face. "Do you think we're going to be together long enough to get married?"

My hand lifted, wrist twisting in a _godonlyknows_ gesture. "I mean, probably."

Hawke stopped recording, and I recalled that, afterward, he rolled me over onto my back and used _me_ as the pillow.

It wasn't until I went to rub more snot from my nose did it occur to me that I'd been quietly crying throughout the duration of the short video. How had things gotten so bad? _It wasn't all bad_ , I told myself. I just couldn't make myself think about anything except the bad.

My pity-party wasn't why I'd decided to grab my phone, though. Gathering myself, I abandoned the videos and returned to the final month of pictures.

There I found what I'd been looking for. The night I'd crashed the CERCLE meeting with Isabela I'd taken pictures of Anders' files. They were blueprints with notes in the margins, lists of ingredients that read as chemicals my English major education couldn't decipher. Had I possessed an iota of nerve, then I would've asked Danarius to decipher it for me during the night I lost my phone, but my distress hadn't allowed me to think beyond that meeting. I'd been losing my grip on Hawke on top of everything else in my life. I'd wanted two things: drugs and affection. Hawke wouldn't give me either, or I wouldn't let him. 

"Fenris," Isabela said, knocking on my door. "I didn't know you were coming over. I'm bored, and Zevran just left. Hangout with me downstairs."

I stood and opened the door, sticking my head out. "Sorry—I'm about to go to bed."

"You're no fun," she complained and heaved a sigh. 

"That's me. No Fun Fenris."

She leaned forward and kissed my forehead. "Sweet dreams, Prickles."

I decided to take the phone to only person I knew who was fluent in chemicals.

That night I dreamt of the clamshell sink I'd set my first pregnancy tester on. Beside it was the Drano usually beneath the sink I'd contemplated gulping like grain alcohol when the two parallel pink lines appeared like bone-crunching train tracks, and then, there was blood. Blood aimlessly streaked across the tile in a chaotic frenzy, creating indecipherable hieroglyphs. In this mess, I was leaned over the sink and brushing my teeth as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Danarius was coming home, and he was bringing Hawke with him, so I had to be ready.

I never saw Hawke or Danarius, though. I walked out of Danarius' bathroom and was suddenly on my mom's lumpy, beige couch. She was working the streets again, and I'd been left alone with my sister. As always, she wanted to go out and party with the 'rich kids' she'd met—the very rich kids who only found novelty in her being a trailer trash mixed girl—but she couldn't leave me alone. Waiting for nothing, she yanked me toward the front door, but before we got down the street, I vomited. Plain as day, I told her I was full of praying mantis eggs.

The next morning, the sheets were drenched in sweat when I dragged myself out of bed and forced myself to get dressed. 

My pride burned when I drove to Kirkwall University, Starbucks between my thighs, fruit cup forgotten on the passenger seat. As soon as I'd moved off campus, I'd cut contact with everyone who'd known me, becoming entirely entrenched in the Hanged Man's routine as a means to not face those anticipating my graduation.

Parking my luxury car beside the rest of the luxury cars known to pepper KU's campus, my exact location was behind the science building. It was a foreign realm, a virtual wasteland I'd endured only long enough to get my science with a lab requirement out of the way. The building was neoclassical brick, like the rest of the gaudy campus, and its observational dome stood like a prized pinnacle. It was another artifice used to convince incoming freshman the education was worth a third of its noose-inducing tuition.

Not a soul recognized me when I entered the building, which suited me fine. The last thing I wanted was a halo of texts crowning my phone because I'd been spotted stalking about campus. The third floor was the chemistry department, holder of all the building's poisons and emergency shower heads. I remembered sitting at the spacious black tables with the gnawing urge to fiddle with the equipment, entirely uninterested in the lectures and labs themselves. How I'd walked out of the class with an A was a mystery to me. All I remembered was drinking from a flask with my tutor and talking about Tevinter, which brought me to why I was there.

A professor who was strikingly bald, even though he was a fairly young, walked toward me with distracted eyes. I turned on my heel to face him, implying I needed to talk. One look over and he seemed suspicious about my presence in the hallway. Everyone knew everyone in his or her department. Kirkwall University was too small to avoid such a fate.

"Have you seen Dorian Pavus?"

"Pavus," he breathed, as if already threadbare by the topic, "would be in the lab."

A self-proclaimed 'madly attractive mad scientist' Dorian Pavus was the son of one of Danarius' best friends. He'd once been on the outskirts of my social circle, milling about in his own partying vapor that never mingled well with mine. See, unlike me, he'd been born into the life, but he attempted to pretend he was insightful enough to know everything about the 'provincial situation.' He had my sympathies, he'd once told me, and he wanted to do everything in his power to reformat the treatment of poverty stricken people of color. This would've burned more had he been white himself, but he wasn't and I could only sneer at him and take his coke.

"Pavus," I purred when I entered the lab. "Anymore wax on that mustache and the Mike and Ike factory could use it to coat their candy for a year."

Standing in front of a horde of books, goggles pushed on top of his head, Dorian greeted me with a disarming smile that bleached the walls white. He was devastatingly attractive for someone who existed to be infuriating. Tall, dark and handsome with both sides of his head shaved and the thick top slicked back using a perfect balance of pomade, he was dressed to the nines. This wasn't surprising. His penchant for wearing Dior was how we'd first bonded, but he was classically casual that afternoon. Skinny, burnt orange corduroys, Chelsea boots and a gray long-sleeved V-neck—he held my attention, always. 

"Well," he said, approaching me after dropping his pencil, "if it isn't my favorite Tevinter tart. My, Fenris, you look as dog-tired as ever. Have you slept since we last spoke?"

"Dorian," I said, staring meaningfully at him, "whatever would make you ask that?"

"Self-aware as always," he muttered, amused. "A little bird told me you dropped out. Father heard and asked Danarius about it, but Danarius wouldn't bleed a word."

"You're talking to him again?"

"No, no," he promised swiftly. "I don't count the bitter emails about my credit card statements and tidbits of gossip he adds with his signature. That's hardly talking. But you _did_ dropout."

"I changed my major to chemistry, actually."

" _Ha_ —liar, liar," he playfully hissed and then we exchanged a quick smile. "Then let me confirm another rumor. Are you married? Someone told me you married that Garrett Hawke in Lowtown. The one with the charming accent."

That was a punch to the gut. "Not on his life."

"Then it went sour? After all those years? Fenris, and here you once made me believe in the power of love. I'm devastated."

I swallowed hard—my throat was a desert. "It's complicated. We're still friends."

"Right. Sometimes love isn't enough, but it's still tragic." He mused for a moment and then blinked in awareness. "Sorry, Fenris. My God, I never thought I'd see you again, actually. Why are you here?"

"To drown in tragedy and your interrogation."

"You English majors," he said, sly eyed.

"No, but," I paused and then cleared my throat, reaching into my bag. "I actually have something I want you to pick apart for me. I'll pay you, even."

Dorian lifted a dark brow as I handed him the printouts of the pictures. He briefly flipped through them and admired the puzzle like a gift. "And what do we have here?"

"A friend of mine had this manila folder. He's been telling us he believes in peaceful protest, but I have reason to question what he's planning. Individually, I can figure out what the chemicals he listed are, but I don't know anything about how they interact or what they're used for. He used to be a medical student, so he's unfortunately good with this kind of thing."

"Interesting," he said, clicking his tongue in thought. Dorian returned his look to me. "I can't look at them now, but I can tonight, after my date. Don't worry about paying me, Fenris. This looks like a good time. I treat these mysteries like a hobby."

"You're a barbarian."

"I'd like to think so."

I pushed my fingers through my hair and dropped them at my side, then going to turn. "I… appreciate the help. My number hasn't changed. Call me when or if you figure it out."

"Could I call you if I wanted to invite you out for some fun? Lowtown sounds stuffy."

This made me stop, and I quirked an eyebrow as if offended, but the sincerity on his face made me soften my expression. "Fine. No promises."

"Fenris, please. As if I don't already know. We all do."

Rolling my eyes, I waved him off only to enter the stairwell with a new text message alert by the time I reached the bottom floor. 

_What're you doing tomorrow night? I want to see you drunk on French 75s again._


	13. Stella Artois

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

Boredom, the worst.

Creator of head fogs and the basest ideas. It's what makes the warbling effect manifest in my vision, and the interior of my bones pulse with anxiety. When there's nothing, there's just nothing; no forward motion, back pedal or motivation to crawl across a ceiling. Everything becomes baseless existence hinged on the paycheck you'll make next week, the emotional charge you get whenever you've had enough sleep to temporarily feel alive. Small things become exciting, and there's the deliberation on whether or not prioritizing the minute is better than obsessing over academic rigor or whether or not you'll get that career.

 _Go back to school_ , I told myself whenever my hands shook from a combination of too much coffee and withdrawal (from blow, from men, from self-importance). These moments wisped around me like tossed hay, always when I least expected them, least needed them.  _Dig yourself out of this hole. There's nothing left to destroy._

It'd only been a semester. Somehow, half of the term had dissolved in a blur that felt like a single fit of loss and desperation. Christmas was already on the horizon, and then three weeks from then, there'd be second semester. I knew that—if I pleaded hard enough—I'd be able to reenroll and finish the following fall. I had the capability to get it together and become another notch in the department's bedpost of success, but the idea of enduring it was overwhelming.

"There's nothing worse than being smart and poor," Anders told me one evening when we were perched outside the Hanged Man, sharing a cigarette. "But you're not the only one."

"Don't make it sound like you regret what you did."

"I do. Every single day I regret it, but I can't take it back, nor am I going to blame myself. I was almost a doctor, Fenris. You're still able to turn it around in your favor."

"Does anyone really have absolute faith in what they're doing?"

"I keep forgetting you're that much younger than me," he said and began absentmindedly playing with his lighter. "No. They don't. You either get good at pretending you believe in yourself or you get caught up in how nothing makes sense. Make your own logic, Fenris. Life is developing your personal science."

They were the same words Hawke had preached to me from the beginning, but through the devotion of love and ignorance, he'd manifested into a virtual punching bag. What Hawke said to me fell on deaf ears, perpetuated nothing but my frustration. Telling him anything felt like an enormous chore because the amount of loss I'd faced in response to who I was had stacked against me. I couldn't bear the thought of another person leaving me. This didn't matter, though. Not at this point, anyway. Hawke was gone, and I had Anders, Isabela and a handful of people who would always step on my shoulder if it meant favoring Hawke.

I've never been the kind of person who built over their last city. Hell bent on reinvention, improvement, I had a history of tearing things apart and rebuilding from the rubble, but that method wasn't working anymore. Becoming someone new, ignoring my own history, had landed me in a place that could've obviously been avoided. No one understood how I'd ended up there, except me, myself, and I, but I couldn't expect the world to listen anymore. There were only so many times someone could romanticize the fact I was a hot fucking mess.

People do stop caring.

People have the right to stop caring.

"What are you doing?" Isabela asked as she descended the stairs and wandered into the kitchen. She wasn't wearing pants. I was wearing her pants. "It's eight in the morning."

In front of me was my MacBook and a cup of coffee. I was staring into the depths of my school email client, rereading the draft of pure unadulterated ass-kissing.

"I'm getting my shit together."

"Wait – " she stopped me and drifted toward the coffee pot. "Let me get a mug in hand. I can feel the calling."

"What calling?"

"The same matriarchal call I have to ignore when I'm making out with you."

"That's disgusting," I managed and reread the same line thrice.

"You look self-satisfied. This is going to be good. Alright –" She lifted her creamed and sugared coffee as a signal that she was prepared. "Hit me with it."

"I'm going back to school."

"Don't you dare be matter-of-fact about something like that, you cherry tart. What made you see the light on that horizon line?" she asked with a raised eyebrow and half-smile. I would've been lying if I said her subtle approval didn't satiate me. "Did Anders' couch give you another wakeup call?"

"Many biology assignments were finished on that couch. One of the couches, anyway. They haven't done wrong by me so much as their owner has."

"I once watched you sneeze blood onto the coffee table after doing a line on one."

I opened my mouth but decided against contesting her. "Fair enough."

She walked around the breakfast bar and then stepped behind me. Isabela draped her arms over my shoulders and pressed her cheek to mine. I leaned against her and she ruffled the hair along my opposite temple with a smile.

"Too bad Hawke's not in Kirkwall right now. He'd want to hear this in person from you."

"He's doing what he needs to," I murmured. "I don't think it's on his radar right now. No one even told me he was gone until he was two hours on the road, remember?"

"There were reasons for that, and it wasn't just you. Don't assume everything's always about you, Fenris. Sometimes we think Hawke's the problem, too."

" _Sometimes_ – that's kind of you."

Hawke was on the road with Aveline, readying himself for his first fight outside of Kirkwall. All of his friends wanted to be there, but the only people making it to his fight were Leandra and Carver. We were holding down the fort while he followed his ambitions for the first time in his life, which was collectively seen as more than fine. After being fucked and taunted on a bathroom sink, it was more than likely for the better that we didn't see one another and take care of ourselves. This clarity wasn't exactly clarity but defeat.

"He'll be back next week, and then you can tell him. Don't text him this, okay?" Isabela kissed my cheek. "I'm proud of you, but when will you learn that your flat ass can't wear my sweatpants?"

To no one's surprise, except maybe Aveline's, Hawke won his first matches in a way that was effortless down to cocky way he cracked his neck while approaching his opponent with a smile. Piled into Merrill's living room with her vegan selection of junk food on our laps, we'd watched the livestream with tight jaws.

"We should get wings after this," Anders murmured to me. "Merrill's new vegan thing is murdering me right now. Did you try the tofu quiche?"

"You should make it a rule that CERCLE members can't be vegans."

"We're not a dictatorship, Fenris."

I raised the quiche to his face. "Just think about it. Hawke would want us to be eating wings right now. To honor him…"

"Don't talk about the man like he's dead. He's three hundred miles away."

"Eat the fucking quiche, Anders," I said and tried pressing it to his lips. "Eat it and tell me I'm wrong."

He pushed my hand away. "Stop."

I tried again. "Anders, seriously."

"Fenris, I'm going to hit you."

"You don't have the nerve."

Anders raised the back of his hand, but dropped it when I didn't stop my attempt to make him take a bite. Exasperated, he finally took his own and tried it.

"That's terrible," he said as he chewed, looking as if his child had just died. "I'm filing a lawsuit."

There was no reason to spend as much time as I did with Anders, especially after what he'd attempted to pull with Sebastian. There was no foundation of trust between us that seemed capable of enduring beyond this stage of my life, and this became more and more apparent the more I began to miss Hawke. At one point, Anders had been a part of my history, and I'd only dredged him back up because there was no one else to find affection from. That's what I told myself, anyway. Making sense out of it all was borderline impossible.

"Look at how he's holding his head," Varric muttered, leaned forward and solely concentrating on his best friend. "Slaughtering him. He's hanging him in the butcher shop."

My eyes turned from Anders and back to the screen. Hawke's thick arms were gripped tight around another man's neck and he was jamming his knee upward. It reminded me of the time Hawke had tried teaching me self-defense and our heated wrestling morphed into the two of us fucking until my thighs were glazed with sweat. We spent the afternoon blaming one another for getting nothing done, and I finally told him I knew self-defense. I'd just wanted to wrestle.

It'd been my job to both be spoiled by Danarius but to also ram my knee into another human's nose until their brains scrambled if Danarius felt threatened. I had to give them man credit for one thing. He didn't discriminate against sex.

"He's criminally strong," Anders muttered.

"Only with the wrong people," I added. "Only with the people who've fucked up."

Hawke returned to Kirkwall after the second time I'd gone out with Dorian and reenrolled in school. We were having a celebratory get together at the Hanged Man, and the establishment was crowded with jacketed people tearing off gloves. In my back pocket was a spring schedule, wrinkled from how many times I'd reopened it to stare at its tiny print. The slip was organized life on a piece of paper, an anchor, a lifesaver instated by me. It was the first time I felt like I'd done something for myself in years, and I couldn't stop subtly smiling to myself.

I was tiredly dragging my thumb across the rim of my glass when the door opened and the collective yell of 'Hawke' rushed through the pub. Hawke yelled back with both fists raised, but I didn't turn to digest more than my peripheral until after he'd managed to hug Varric.

He was bundled in a long sleeve V-neck that went too low for the safety of children and my wholesome heart alike. We'd once attempted to wax his bear-chest on a drunken whim. Hawke had cried after a single strip, me straddling him and determined, and he wouldn't speak to me for an entire hour afterward. I'd ripped off a layer of his skin, made him bleed, and for some reason, he got it in his head that I'd done it on purpose. It wasn't until I made him a grilled cheese and called him 'baby' did he roll off the bed and talk to me as if nothing had happened.

Hawke appeared beside me and finally pushed back his zip up sweater's hood, wiping the rain from his freckled nose. Looking at him always started a small revolution inside me. He was beautiful, smart, motived. Half the time, I couldn't tell if I wanted to be him or fuck him.

"Been behaving yourself?" Hawke asked without looking my way. He leaned in and gave Merrill's cheek a kiss.

"Always," I said, lips hovering along the rim of my glass. "Congratulations on the fight."

"He actually has been," Merrill inserted. She was defending me before Hawke's tongue grew sharp. "You just wait, Hawke. A little over a week and you've missed out. We move fast here."

"Don't make leaving even harder," he muttered and then took his beer. He turned toward me. "Did you see when…"

"You jammed your knee into his face and knocked him cold?" I asked. "I saw. I watched the whole thing, but you can tell me about it if you want."

Hawke parted his lips, impressed.

"Nice shirt, by the way," I said to clear the air. My eyes went directly to his hairy cleavage, and he pursed his lips only to suddenly laugh. It was husky, ripped from his chest.

"Nice grandma sweater. I can tell you're trying to get every motor in this room revvin' for you." He blew a raspberry and made a handlebar motion with his free hand. "I've always liked you in winter, though. The leggings and sweaters are cute."

"You could've used a less epicene word there."

Hawke sat down beside me and spun on his stool. I could feel the stares boring into us, but for once, I didn't care. I wanted his attention. "Can I really tell you about the fights?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I didn't mean it."

Hawke's expression warmed, and his shoulders relaxed. In that gnarled accent, he dished out everything he could remember, explaining the integral parts and the adrenaline he'd felt taking each fist to his face. I eyed the dark purple and yellows around his eyes, and he leaned in so that I could see the colors better. We both agreed it wasn't as impressive as his street fight injuries, and he promised to make a cameo appearance in one sooner than later. While he talked, there was this rush through my neck that reminded me of what it felt like when you experienced the sublime, fell in love with your surroundings and somehow exalted them. Hawke was nature at its finest, and I willingly acknowledged his strength, impossible containment.

I wasn't exalting Hawke, but I was exalting the familiarity and sense of normalcy I'd somehow let slip between my fingers. I was centering myself when I'd thought all orbit had been lost to colliding planets, entirely beyond the realm of my insignificantly human control.

"What'd you do, though?" he suddenly asked. "Merrill said you behaved yourself?

I stopped myself from immediately telling him, and instead, I reached into my jacket pocket and tugged out the folded piece of paper. I handed it to him and waited.

Hawke eyed me suspiciously as he opened it. He looked down and his eyes darted across the words, which were difficult to process at first glance. As it became clear, he ran his thumb along my name in the top right corner, and he sharply looked up at me.

"Fenris," he managed, and he gripped the paper tight before folding it and handing it back. Our eyes met, and he inspected my face, searching for a reason to doubt. "I'm proud."

"Don't be proud of something that should just be done. It's not about me tonight, anyway. I figured you should know before you get too drunk to think."

He reached out and cupped the side of my head and leaned in to kiss my temple. He murmured into my hair, "I didn't know a night could be made twice. Well, not in this way."

"Don't ruin it," I breathed and he chuckled.

With my teeth chewing on the inside of my lip, I struggled against a smile and hardened watery stare that trembled. My lips twisted to the side, but I broke, suddenly laughing through whatever shot of pain that rumpled my sternum like notebook paper.

"Go drink," I said. "Make  _my_  night twice and enjoy yourself."

Even though I'd replaced my drinking with cocaine, I only made one trip to the bathroom that night, but I wasn't alone. Hawke, drunk beyond his usual ability to abstain from hard drugs, joined me to do a line without being subtle. In fact, he'd yelled for me as soon as he saw me walking into the men's room. Once inside, he proved he wasn't stable, mumbling a million things at once and leaned shoulder-to-wall with his eyes on my careful hands. We momentarily made eye contact, but there wasn't the rush to kiss or tear our clothes off. I realized then that those impassioned moments had been spurred by rage and the lack of grip we had on one another. Right then, we were fine, and I liked to think we were vaguely content, happy.

"This stops when you go back to school," he said and took the rolled dollar I'd offered him. He leaned over, and I eyed his chest once more. "No more of this shit. It's terrible for you."

"I didn't know my cocaine didn't have vitamins and minerals."

"Fenris," he said, pointing at me with the dollar. He was still pressing a nostril shut. "None of that, baby."

He ripped back his line, and one of my favorite rarities was Hawke with blown open pupils. This went against everything I believed in him doing, but it was different when it was with me. At least then there was some semblance of illusionary control.

"Anders give this to you?" he asked and shook his head like a wet dog, scraping up the excess and rubbing it along his gums.

"Yeah," I said and took the dollar from him. "He has the best shit."

"I'm gonna rip his dick off," he muttered. "Fucks my boy while I'm gone, fucks him up while I'm gone. Some goddamn best friend."

The rest of the night was a blur of yelling, singing and Hawke swallowing gulp after gulp of attention from his favorite customers and best friends. The last thing I remembered before falling asleep was telling Hawke I was sorry as we stumbled up the stairs. He asked me what I was sorry for, hands steadying me by holding my hips from behind.

"Everything," I said and laughed when we both hit our knees after trying to walk through the door side-by-side. "I'm sorry for everything."

In the morning, I woke up in his bed. Entirely clothed, Hawke wasn't there, but Pig was slumped on top of me. His head was like a ham placed directly on my chest, and I rubbed my nose at the scent of his rotten dog breath only to groan. Half-dead, I reached up and weakly petted his snout, then scratched behind his ears until his breath became too much for me to handle. From the living room, I could hear Hawke plucking at his guitar, and the song sleepy and forlorn. Hawke rarely played songs we knew unless it was to annoy us. He made things up on spot.

After a battle with Pig, I dragged my meat sack off the mattress and ventured into the living room. Hawke was settled with his coffee, playing with his eyes closed. He only stopped to open them when I made a floorboard creak, and we waved at one another. He pointed toward the coffee pot and hummed to himself as he went back to what he was doing.

"Sick?" he asked.

"No," I replied and took my time with the cream, watched the slow stream create a tired swirl. "Have you been awake long?"

"Long enough for you to get thirty text messages."

"I don't have enough friends to get thirty text messages."

Hawke gestured with a noncommittal shrug and pointed at my phone. Its screen lit up, and he chuckled before leaving me to inspect it. Coffee in hand, I drifted around the edge of the couch and reached for the iPhone. He hadn't been kidding. There were twenty-seven texts from a single number, which wasn't in my contacts. Wondering what the emergency was, I opened the messages to read the thread, but it was a single sentence sent over and over again.

 

> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._
> 
> _Leto wouldn't have done this._

I'd been found out.

"I'm dead," I said, words thick from sleep, diluting the shock.

Hawke stopped playing and smiled at me, "We're all dead men walking here. Who'd you make mad this time? Is it Anders?"

"Danarius found out I'm not with the Qunari. He knows I took his money, which means he's going to send someone out here to snuff me."

Acid was thrown across Hawke's smile. We suddenly existed in stunned silence, neither one of us able to look at the other. For a split-second, it was as if we both knew there was nothing I could do. Hawke blinked through this abrupt fog and stood, setting his guitar aside on the couch.

He grabbed my shoulder. "Is there anywhere you can go to lay low that isn't with one of us? We've got to get you out of here."

"I'm going to call my sister."

Hawke wrinkled his nose. "Varania is the worst option. Isn't she on meth?"

"Unfortunately, she's the only option."

"Get out of Kirkwall," he continued. I caught the bridge of my nose and squeezed. Hawke leaned in and ghosted his mouth across my eyebrow piercing. "It's going to be fine. Is there somewhere up north or maybe even low south? I'm going to talk to Anders about taking care of this without getting all of us locked up. I might call Sebastian."

"I should handle this."

"You're not going to do anything except run."

That coaxed an exasperated laugh out of me. "I'm good at that."

"You might be, but it's not good for you, and fuck if it's doing anything anymore."

He had a point, and I let him know this by turning to face him. "There's no getting around I have to stay with Varania until this is sorted out and we can figure out how to get me out of here. I'm thinking hopping an ocean, at this point."

"I could set you up somewhere in Ireland."

"You've done enough for me," I said with honest resilience, "and I can handle this. All I ask from you is that you go with me to Varania's. I'm going to call her after I shower, brush my teeth and vomit. I'm not sure if I'm hungover or actually repulsed by my life right now."

"Probably a combination of both," Hawke said and released my shoulder so that he could shut the blinds and lock the front door. "I'm going to call Merrill and tell her not to come in today. Maybe Varric can handle the front. I might ask Anders."

I showered with Hawke's soap and scrubbed my scalp until I scratched it raw. After rinsing, I lowered myself onto the shower floor and wondered if I could kill myself right there with minimal mess. This was a matter-of-fact thought, an idea based on utter convenience. It wasn't so much that I wanted to die, but there seemed to be a missing ladder, a glitch in the matrix that wasn't letting me continue onto the next level. At this point, I was becoming bored with the mayhem and toxicity that followed me like bloody foot prints in snow. I needed to hit the reset button somewhere, but it was becoming harder and harder to find it.

The idea of living didn't scare me. I just wasn't good at it.

I clumsily turned the water off with my feet and laid naked in the tub, still soaked when I reached for my phone to call Varania. With my luck, I figured she wouldn't have the same number. We hadn't talked in years, but it rang, and she picked up.

"Hello," she said, dulled by the idea of talking to me. I was too quiet too long, startled by the idea that I had family, an actual blood tie that could speak to me. "Leto, is that you?"

"Sorry – I'm here." I pushed my fingers through my damp hair, smoothing out the tangles and wiping the loose, bleached tresses onto the shower wall. "I haven't called in a while."

"I haven't seen you since you started college."

"Right," I said and cleared my throat. "Neither of us was exactly available."

"You especially. Mother asked about you a lot." She was quiet, and when I said nothing else, she pushed. "Is everything alright?"

"Does Danarius still pay your rent?" I asked, unwilling to take her bait.

Varania exhaled. "He puts the money into my account once a month. It's been that way for years, Leto. Did something happen between you two, again?"

"I think so. I need a place to stay for a couple days."

Another long drag of silence. Varania reluctantly exhaled it. "That's fine. You don't mind sleeping on the couch, do you? I don't think you'd like sleeping in the baby's room."

"Baby…"

"I had a baby, Leto. While you were doing whatever you do with Danarius, some of us were having lives. Some of us were being responsible, even."

I closed my eyes and thought about the ceiling dropping on top of me, hot water suddenly pouring out of the faucet and boiling me alive. "That's great. It's great right? How old is it?"

" _He's_  ten months, and it's great," she said tersely. I wondered who the father was. Probably a John. "I'm home right now. You can come by whenever. If Danarius starts anything while you're here, then you're out of my house. I'm not having that around the baby."

"I appreciate it," I said, earnestly. "You don't understand."

"I'm sure I don't. I don't think I ever have."

Varania hung up, and I stared at my wet phone screen. Contemplating drowning myself, I turned the faucet back on and stopped the drain. The tub started to fill, and when Hawke heard the change in water, he knocked once and let himself inside. I said nothing at first, and he leaned against the door frame with arms crossed over his chest. I dropped the phone on the rug and looked at him.

"My sister has a baby," I told him before he asked. "It sounds like she's doing well."

Hawke whistled and crouched down beside the tub. "What'd she say about you staying?"

"She agreed to it, but she doesn't  _want_ to see me."

He nodded with an airy ' _ah_ ' and added soap to the water for makeshift bubbles. His eyes didn't leave my face. "She should know what you've done for them. Maybe she does and she just misses you."

"Money doesn't look like a lot to her. I get it. How does she know what I've done if we never talk to one another? She still hates me for being out of country when our mother died. Monthly rent and making sure her weave looks nice doesn't really make up for that."

Hawke processed this and reached to push back my wet bangs. "You've broke your back for 'em. I've watched you carry the weight for years, and you're really bad at reading the scale."

"Pot calling the kettle black." Hawke opened his mouth to counter that, but I stopped him. Lounged against the back of the tub, resting my arm on the rim, the words started to tumble effortlessly. "If he kills me, then you know I love you, don't you? None of this was ever because you did wrong by me. All I wanted was to be happy for a little while, and you made me happy - so,  _so_  happy. I just did it before I was ready for you. I couldn't be deliriously in love with someone when I was also deliriously hating myself at the same time. It wasn't fair to you. I was afraid of how ugly I was becoming... I didn't want you to see..."

I shifted over to fold my arms across the tub's edge, and I laid my head there. He reached out to pet his fingers along my head, and the sickness from earlier blurred with my vision. Hawke pressed his mouth to the side of my head when my shoulders shook.

"I've always understood, Fenris."

We drove to Varania's after another mug of coffee and toast. I packed an overnight bag and took the time to withdrawal as much as I could from an ATM before handing my keys to Hawke. I told him to hide them, and we took Varric's truck to Varania's duplex in Lowtown. It wasn't far from the Hanged Man, but Hawke didn't want me walking anywhere.

"It's about as nice as you can get in Lowtown," Hawke observed, admiring the place that wasn't that different from Isabela's and mine. We were parked outside, and I was stalling. "Do you want me to go in with you? I can."

I told him I didn't want him to, but after I opened the door, I changed my mind. "Come with me."

Varania opened the door before we stepped inside with a fat infant on her hip. Her gaze went directly to Hawke, never paying me much mind, and she jerked it from his face and onto my shortened hair. The last time she'd seen me my hair had still been long and black. I'd came out to Varania before going to college, even explaining that Danarius supported me, but she hadn't taken to it. It was one of the many reasons we hadn't bothered speaking to one another. Not to mention, Danarius loathed my family. If he'd thought I wouldn't notice, then he would've killed them years ago to simplify the formula.

"Who's that?" she asked and pushed open the screen door.

"Garrett Hawke," I quickly said, as if that explained everything. Varania righted her shoulders, cleared her throat. "He's a friend."

"You didn't tell me about a friend, Leto."

Hawke opened his mouth in surprise. It was the first time he'd heard me called that before. I'd once told him my birth name in passing. He'd even seen it on my driver's license when first carding me at the Hanged Man, but I knew it was stranger on the ears from others.

"Does it matter?" I asked.

"I thought he was a phase, is all."

"It's been about four years now," I dryly explained. "I think we're past the phase part."

She let us inside her small living room, which was loaded with every baby toy imaginable. Directly in front of us stood a set of stairs, and to the right was a recently bleached kitchen. From the lemon fresh scent and lit candles, I could tell she'd spent the morning making her home presentable. I admired the fact she had a home. It was a sharp contrast to the dives our mother moved us in and out of throughout our childhood.

"You look well," Varania said, but my eyes couldn't leave the baby. His cheeks were pudgy, green eyes squinting my way. We looked alike. "Did you or Hawke want anything to drink? I think we're going to have to set down some ground rules. I have Stella Artois, but that's it."

A separate voice interrupted us from atop the stairs. "That's enough, Varania."

"Shit," I murmured without having to look. I knew that voice too well. Instead, I took a step toward Varania. "You _told_ him."

"Leto," she started cautiously, backing away from us both. "I didn't have a choice. You don't know what it was like. You don't know what I've been through trying to get by while you were out partying and making headlines. We were still on food stamps even with that money. Mother's medical bills. We couldn't afford her medical bills or the diapers she needed near the end. He told me call him if you ever got yourself in trouble, and he'd pay me for it. You're always in trouble. You're always fucking up, Leto. I needed his help more than you ever have."

Danarius descended the stairs with a slow gate. His dynamism was languid, unimpressed by the threat Hawke and I posed together. Hawke had never faced Danarius in such an enclosed setting before, and the entire confrontation made my nerves spike. It was like a man meeting a myth, two ideas I'd never dreamt of colliding in my lifetime.

"He's different from the pictures, Fenris," Danarius said, indifferent but amused enough by his ability to maintain his ego to smile. "To think this is what you've turned into a little traitor for. Accents are charming, but I think this has gone on long enough, don't you? We've reached a point where we need to make an agreement. A long term one, at that."

"I don't owe you an agreement," I started, stepping away from my sister and moving myself in front of Hawke. Hawke tried to switch our spots, but I elbowed him back. "Take the car and take the money. I'll pay you back, but I'm through with whatever we had, Danarius. I'm not running drugs, and I'm sure as hell not going back to your bed."

He feigned hurt, reaching up to touch his chest. He made this gesture anytime I rejected him. "You loved me, Fenris. Wouldn't you like to go back to that? We could finish all those plans we made together. Marriage, Fenris. I've even divorced my wife for you. Every time we try that's the problem. You just don't try hard enough. You don't know how to try with me there."

"Fenris is his own person," Hawke interjected, voice dark with a quiet rage I'd never heard before. "I have nothing to do with his decision to leave you."

"Oh, I see what we have here. Fenris is most impressive, isn't he? It's hard to let go after having him. He'll do anything if you promise him enough, but that's the problem with you, Hawke. You don't have enough."

I flinched and wrinkled my nose. When he landed at the bottom step, I brought my arms back. "I'm as old as your children."

"Give him back to me, Hawke. I'll compensate you for it."

Danarius was giving power to Hawke without humoring the idea that I might have authority over myself. Opening my mouth in silent surprise, my hand darted down into the bag resting against my hip, and when chilly metal greeted my fingertips, I jerked out the pistol I'd brought with me out of habit. It'd stopped for a while during college, but after moving in with Isabela, we'd all taken up the habit once again. I undid the safety with a practiced click and pointed with both hands clenched tight in front of me. Varania screamed and I gestured at her with the gun, never taking my eyes off Danarius.

"Shut the fuck up, Varania. Go to the other room."

She listened, but Hawke didn't move. He reached behind himself and tugged out his own gun, but he didn't raise it. It was a gesture solely to let Danarius know I wasn't the only one who'd thought ahead.

Danarius took a step toward us. "Put the toy away, Fenris. Imagine what would happen if you killed me right here, right now. You'd surely go to prison, and I wouldn't be able to bail you like I always have. Isn't that how it is with you? Always someone else. It's always someone else there to clean up the messes you leave behind. It should be the other way around, at this point."

I locked my arms. The saliva along my tongue was too thick to swallow and the shaking in my torso was making everything in my body tense. Sweat accumulated along the back of my neck, and I thought about what exactly would happen if I killed him. There was cleanup that went into dumping a body, scrubbing my hands clean of evidence. I thought about Sebastian's connections and Varric's network, which was followed by the truth that Hawke was the most loved man in Kirkwall, whether or not one knew him personally. For the first time in my life, I felt safe in my position and trusted in the people I loved.

"I am  _not_ your slave."

His stare grew large when I cried out in stifled rage from behind gritted teeth, and with my own eyes wide, I pulled the trigger; once, twice, thrice.

By the third shot, my eyes were glazed and wet, entirely unseeing from the start. I kept pressuring the trigger, even when Danarius fell back against the stairs in a dead heap that only moved with the impact of each bullet. Heaving my chest, but somehow still unable to breathe, Hawke caught the inside of my elbows and yanked them down to keep me from shooting anymore. I rapidly blinked when I realized what had just happened. Trembling from adrenaline and anger, I saw Danarius' dropped corpse in front of me, rigid and hollow with his final breath unrealized, and suddenly, I released a mournful wail. Hawke swung his arms around my waist and tugged me back against his chest to keep me from pursuing the man's corpse.

He covered my eyes with a palm, an attempt to censor what I'd done, and I cried out in anguish as tears ripped from me. The gun stayed in hand.

"He's dead," I wailed, and for the sake of our safety and freedom, Hawke uncovered my eyes and clasped his hand over my mouth. Spit and hot breath fanned against Hawke's hand as I continued, "I killed him!"

"I know he is, baby," he murmured and buried his face into the back of my head. "I know you did. It's okay, though. It's okay."

Hawke tugged out his phone and called Varric, still holding me as I silently sobbed against his hand until my abdomen cramped. My brain told me I'd loved Danarius, even if I knew that wasn't possible. It was ingrained in me to mourn his death as a personal loss, but not for the right reasons.

"Varric, we've got a problem," Hawke said and then paused when Varric clearly made a humorous quip. "I'm serious. Fenris just killed Danarius."

There was a long pause on Varric's end and then I heard him quickly hammer out a list of things to Hawke. Hawke muttered 'right, right,' and he paused again to let Varric talk.

"It happened in Lowtown. I'm alright, but I need to take Fenris somewhere to calm down. I owe ya for this. Tell Anders for me, okay?" Hawke's final pause was accented by a sad smile. "I'll let him know you're a regular proud father. Bye."

"We need to get moving," Hawke said and then went to pick me up, but Varania stepped into the room only to gasp in terror at the sight of Danarius' bleeding body. It could've been worse. I'd only shot him in the heart. He could've been shot in the head, which would've been a nightmare to clean.

I turned the empty gun on Varania and she screamed, lifting both hands. Hawke said nothing, knowing full well the gun wasn't loaded anymore.

"Don't kill me, Leto! Don't! I have a  _baby_!"

"If you tell anyone," I started, voice shaking and ragged. "I'll kill you myself."

Varania nodded with a dead swallow.

Hawke took the gun from my tight fingers, dropping it with an unthinking thud. He playfully tugged up my sweater's hood for me and wiped up the final tears that'd drained to my neck. "Varric said to leave it. Let's go."

With Hawke at my side, I strode out the front door. The screen banged shut behind us, and I breathed.


	14. Deschutes: The Abyss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote 10,000 words this week. My eyes are stinging, and I'm tired. I'm so, so, so weary. We're not doing this again next chapter. Next chapter is gonna be so relaxed and no one's gonna die. Someone's gonna drink eggnog and it'll gonna be domestic. We're not doing anymore of this. We are done for a while. Do y'all understand?

Anders got a cat.

This had been an ongoing work in progress, but he finally did it.

Hawke and I walked into his apartment with my shoulders shaking and his face entirely stoic, having been mostly silent on our way to the apartment. Everyone was acting as if what I'd done was the equivalent to losing my virginity to some high school asshole I'd only liked because he smoked meth and rode a skateboard. While Varric had called Anders ahead of time, he barely acknowledged us when we let ourselves inside with Hawke's complimentary 'best friend' key. Anders was too busy holding the cat from beneath her armpits, gazing at her face as if she carried all the landmark significance of a Benjamin West.

"Nice living specimen," Hawke said and shut he door behind us, locking it and then swiftly sliding the chain over. Out of paranoia, he shoved a chair in front of the door and promptly sat down in it. I couldn't blame him. "Where'd you get it?"

"She found me," he said and then pressed his nose to hers.

"You and strays," Hawke said and grunted as he shifted down, quickly lighting a cigarette with the sleepy score of a lighter.

"This one shouldn't scratch as much. She won't piss on my things."

"I'm not in the mood for metaphors," I cut in and took my seat on the dingy ottoman directly across from Anders. "Got anything?"

"You don't need anything right now," Anders said coolly and handed me his menthols. He noticed my hands were violently shaking and took them from me to light the cigarette. "You actually killed Danarius. Can't say I wasn't waiting for it, but I expected it to be more dramatic."

"It was plenty dramatic," Hawke dryly assured him.

"I say we hide you before the cops wise up."

"They won't be wising up." Hawke cleared his throat, bouncing his knee. He suddenly stood up to grab a beer and called out from the kitchen. "Varric is handling it just fine."

Anders twisted his lips to the side. "Then they really  _won't_  find him."

"We need to tell Arishok."

Hawke's expression soured and Anders clearly shared his sentiment. Neither one of them jumped at the topic, and I understood why. Arishok was difficult. Getting to know him had been an enduring process on my part, and we'd even once been fond of one another.

"Just because you can't beat him in a fight doesn't mean anything," I said dully. Hawke scoffed, as if it weren't true.

"He's a conflict of interest to us," Anders reminded me. "He's with the Chantry and manipulating local politics. Telling him what you did to Danarius isn't going to help us. He could hold that over your head until you die."

" _We_  die," Hawke added.

"You don't know him," I pointed out, and Anders mocked me with his hands raised, nose wrinkled as he muttered to himself 'you don't  _know_  him, Anders.' "The Qunari are loyal to no one. We could use Danarius' game plan but do it smarter. If we align ourselves with Qunari favor, then we'll be able to navigate their agenda. He might be willing to the protect the both of you if you cut him a percentage. He's not going to give up territories or stop taking them over."

"That's getting too capitalistic," Anders muttered. "That's not equal opportunity. It's one person controlling everything. I'm not here to have a cartel government that demonizes us even more. Do you understand? Think about that jacket on your back next time you speak."

"Fine," I snapped. "Then I know  _exactly_  what we'll do."

"Since when are you calling the shots?" Hawke asked, but he wasn't challenging me. He was more or less amused that I had the nerve, especially after what'd just happened.

"Since I'm the only one who knows all of Danarius' codes, numbers, bank accounts and his clientele." I stood up and started to pace. I kept my cigarette between my thumb and forefinger, thinking quickly, suddenly realizing my window was narrow. "I know him. I know him better than anyone. I might've been his child bride, but I knew him and his business. I can talk to all of his clients. They saw my face more than they saw his."

"Fenris," Hawke began cautiously, "what're you thinking?"

"I need to go to Danarius' house," I said and opened my palm to Hawke. "Where did you put the keys?"

"Your bulbs a little loose. Wouldn't suggest going there right now. Won't it be suspicious if you showed up out of the blue, stinkin' like death?" He fished through his jacket pocket and handed them to me. "You shouldn't go alone."

"You're right," I readily agreed. "I'll need you two to carry boxes."

The duo didn't question me as we strode out of the apartment and returned Varric's truck in order to switch out for my car. I'd been an integral part of Danarius' neighborhood for years, so it wasn't suspicious for me to randomly appear and disappear for weeks at a time. For most, I was a piece of golden gossip worthy of extorting. People wore my name on their lips like accessories, and it was how I'd managed to enter the circles I'd once been involved in. I was too interesting not to be known by all of them. Most of them actually thought I was polite.

Danarius' mansion was nearly abandoned when we arrived, Hawke having taken the wheel because he knew I was too shaky to drive. As we rode through the streets, Anders saw it fit to critique the cost of landscaping, and I told him if he invested more in his, then he'd probably have an easier time getting laid. He shut up, thought about it and then leaned forward between the passenger and driver's seat to kiss my cheek and laugh.

"He's just tense," Hawke explained for me, but Hawke was tense from the cheek kiss.

I groaned at the sight of Hadriana's BMW. With an exasperated series of grunts, I leaned forward, reached beneath the seat and dug out my Glock, acting like my mother had told me to do the dishes. Anders muttered 'what the fuck' as I seamlessly made sure both the silencer was attached and it was loaded. The motions had been long absent, but they were instilled in me like second nature. Sebastian and I had once nearly lived at the shooting range.

"Remember when you two said I didn't understand anything about  _your_  world? I didn't know anything about drugs?" I turned the safety off and pushed open the door. I looked back at Hawke and Anders with a pointed stare. My brow furrowed. My nose scrunched. "Well, here's my belated  _fuck you_. I'm about to make you two very, very rich."

"I feel like we should stop him," Anders calmly said as I stepped out of the car.

Hawke didn't share the sentiment. He stepped out and locked the car.

Both men followed me into the house, only pausing when I stabbed in the code to the front door. It swung open, and I knew the only reason it was empty was because it was the middle of the week and Danarius' underlings were either doing their homework for AP English or investing their allotted time into their fraternities, parents, younger siblings. Literal children, maybe not in legality, but most definitely in maturity, were circling the drain because how could anyone pass up that kind of money at their age? It was someone taking advantage of financial apathy, the sense of no future beyond the limitations the generation before had set for them.

I strode into the living room and yelled Hadriana's name. Hawke and Anders stood in the foyer, admiring how massive his home was. It was lavishly minimalist.

Hadriana appeared at the top of the stairs with her shoulders lopsided, lips bigger than the last time I'd seen her. She had a roach in hand, but as soon as she realized it was me, she tossed it into the nearest potted plant and began descending the stairs. At one point, I might have liked her enough to tolerate her, but then the jealousy, the underhanded torture, and the way Danarius laughed when we'd take one another by the hair and try to beat each other dead by the pool because someone had called the other a 'scraped whore' ruined whatever bond we might've shared. We'd only just graduated high school when we'd met, and I thought about how she'd threatened to throw acid on me because I was going to waste it on hormones, surgeries and facial hair. My assigned form was everything she'd wanted. I was destroying her aspiration.

"Where's Danarius?" she asked, a voice like sheets of frost on a windshield.

"Dead," I said and it took every ounce of me not to falter. Her expression slackened into a cocktail of shock and disbelief. I shook it for her by continuing. "I'm taking his papers, the evidence of his business, the laptops. I'm taking everything, and I'm taking over his clients and the kids. His wife isn't going to want to deal with any of this, and you and I both know she  _won't_. His kids will inherit his laundering business, and they'd rather eat their hands than have this ruin whatever façade they have going on. I'm the only one who knows how to clean this up."

" _You_  haven't done shit in  _years_."

"You never did shit in the first place. Having a fluency in Excel doesn't make you a drug lord, Hadriana. It makes you a secretary."

Her chest heaved, and just like Danarius, she stopped at the foot of the stairs. Her lips became a line, and only then did she notice the gun in my hand. Her eyes flitted down and ripped upward toward Hawke and Anders who'd remained back, practically holding popcorn. We circled one another like dogs. She was making sure she could see all three of us while still having the potential to run toward the backdoor if need be.

"He's changed the passwords on all the computers, the safe's code is different. Do you really think he'd keep using your birthday once you left him? You left him, Fenris. You're as entitled to his things as – "

I flipped the gun around in my hand, and without an ounce of restraint, clubbed the side of her heavily contoured face. We'll call it a force of nature, but truthfully, I was just pissed. Hadriana hit her knees, and I crouched down in front of her, admiring the way blood poured from her nose in an endless stream. It warmly puddled between us, and I twisted my lips to the side, continuing to dwell on the eating disorder she'd induced, the sense of self-hatred, the encouragement to vomit and eat cocaine like Fun Dip.

"Here's what we're going to do," I said, business-like. "You're going to write down every password you know, and I mean _all_  of them. Then, you're going to go upstairs, pack your bags and go home to your mother. When you talk to the police, even though I highly doubt anyone's going to be looking for Danarius for a while, you will lie the way Danarius taught us to lie whenever he thought he might have to leave the country. Keep it consistent, and no one will ask you who or what happened beyond that. I'll make sure of it."

"Not on your  _life_."

I reached for her hair and proceeded to shove the barrel to her mouth, not blinking when one of her front teeth chipped.

Anders sucked air through his gritted teeth. "Jesus Christ, Fenris."

Her eyes widened, and it was then she realized I was serious. She screamed and I tightened my grip to shut her up. "There's a book upstairs! There's a book and it has all of the names and numbers, the passwords. It's in the safe. It's still your birthday. I lied. I…"

And I shot her.

The expulsion of blood was much more than Danarius' death. I didn't blink at the kickback. Instead, I watched as her brain matter and skin shavings flew across the rug.

Hadriana twitched twice and then fell over with a thud that accented my shallow breathing, the odd fear of her continuing what Danarius had started coursing through me.

"She once tried to make me overdose," I said to no one and unsteadily stood, then unaware of the bloody static on my face. "Tell Varric he has one more job."

Hawke said nothing but Anders was breathing hard. I motioned for them to follow me with the gun, and I returned the safety to its proper place as we climbed the stairs to Danarius' bedroom. A room of terror, Hawke stood at the door, unable to enter for several seconds due to the implications it held. He wouldn't look at me, wouldn't look at Anders.

"The safe is in the closet, and there's one under the bed."

I pointedly took the one out from beneath the bed because it was the one full of my underage nudes. I considered burning them that evening, but when I saw them, had the imagery of me being exploited laid out at my knees, I pushed my fingers through my hair and heaved hard. There was a better method to disposing of them.

We gathered the safe, every laptop he'd used for his records, the files, and finally, the cash Danarius had watched Hadriana and I sew into one of the guest mattresses.

"What're you going to do with all of this?" Anders asked at the boxes of cash.

"Pay for school," I said and paused. "Give some to my sister and the underage kids he had coming around. I'm going to tell them to go home, finish school and never show their faces in this part of the neighborhood again if they value their lives."

"That's it?" Anders stared at the cash in his hands. "Fenris, this is thousands of dollars we're looking at."

"What?" I asked, feigning confusion. I stared down at the box of green in front of me. "This is the yearly income from the Hanged Man. This the money I'm going to be making when I start up my own business next month. My accountant will take good care of this. She has this bank in China she likes me to use, and I think you'll see it has the best interest rates."

Hawke and Anders looked at one another, looked back at me and then Hawke stared at the money in his hand only to start laughing. It was more out of disbelief, shock.

Dropping the act, I stood and stared at our boxes. I knew I could blackmail Danarius' family with child pornography claims if need be, and I'd have Varric hire someone to loop any security tapes. These were smart precautions, but they were unnecessary. Kirkwall didn't care about its wealthier corruption. It was the younger people, the smaller people that bothered them. People would assume Danarius ran from his wife, the Qunari or even went back to Tevinter for business reasons. There were plenty of explanations to excuse not caring.

We loaded the car and left Danarius' house, pointedly locking up as if we'd never been there. The gun was left behind so that Varric could have it melted down and tossed into sea, and we drove back to the Hanged Man with a heavy veil dropped on top of us.

"We're going to take over his clients," I said. "Well, you are, Hawke."

"I am?" he asked, incredulous with reason. "I didn't sign up for this."

"You wanted more than Lowtown, didn't you? You wanted your mom to have more than her uncle's house, right? Kirkwall won't touch you if you suddenly come into money. People love you no matter what you say or do. You're charming, white and have an accent. You're unstoppable, Hawke. The only person who can do it is  _you_. You won't even have to do anything with it, really. The accountant will cover everything. It just has to be your bar."

Hawke considered this. I could see he liked the idea. "I need to think about it. Doesn't this go against everything you believe?"

"I'm not touching it beyond today, and no one's going to be using children or pissing on minorities to cover their tracks. I want my degree, and I want to pretend this never happened. I'm thinking about getting my Masters down south."

"You're not going to head the HR department of our drug ring?"

"Don't mock me," I muttered.

Anders glanced to the side and thought. He cleared his throat and leaned back. "We can't do anything about it now that they're both dead, anyway."

My stomach suddenly churned, my ears ringing and face tingling. "Hawke, pull over."

"We need to get this shit hidden, Fenris. I don't think we have time for…"

Hawke saw my face and immediately did as I'd asked. Hands shaking, I lurched open the passenger door and leaned out. I was unable to get out of the car before I started to vomit.

The spewing went on until Hawke had to put the car in park and lean over into the passenger seat to pull back my bangs. His hand petted along my spine as I started to simultaneously dry heave, burp through bile and violently allow the sobs to wrack me. The pain spreading through my ribs wasn't human, a forest fire that charred me into dusting branches.

"It's alright," Hawke reassured me, even though we both knew nothing we'd done was right. Neither one of us could get it right. "Remember that one time I started crying when I couldn't put together the IKEA shelf and you had to help me?"

For some reason, even though it was inappropriate, I laughed. I was still leaned over, waiting to vomit what was left of my organs.

"You two deserve one another," Anders flatly said.

"Bystanders are as guilty as bullies," Hawke countered and then kissed my shoulder. "You alright? Not gone in the head or anything?"

"Long been gone," I said through heavy breathing.

He hummed and reached into my glove compartment for napkins. "We'll get you a jar when we get back to the Hanged Man, and then you can sleep it off."

They were acting so calm. It was almost as if they'd been in the same situation before. I didn't want to know, didn't want to ask if Hawke and Anders had killed anyone before. Something had to have happened, though. Otherwise, Varric wouldn't have been so easy to call, Hawke wouldn't have been half as calm. It was breezing past them like a fact of life.

Varric greeted us behind the Hanged Man with a beer in hand, and he watched us cart the boxes of money into the walk-in with a soft chuckle. The computers would be taken to Varric's brother's house where we'd get everything we needed ripped off of them before they were burned. Eventually, the money would be dispersed throughout the group and cash would be put back for emergencies. Hawke would meet with the accountant next week.

I reassured myself this while drinking the Deschutes: The Abyss we had on tap, staring dully at the sandwiches Hawke had made Anders and me. Hawke took more bites of mine than I did, and when he finally accepted I wasn't going to eat more than a couple fries, took the whole thing and leaned over to kiss my temple. It was soft, to the point, and it was like being put to bed.

"My mother wants you to come over for Christmas," he said, as if it were any casual sit down. "She bought you presents, even made you an ornament."

Hawke pulled back the blankets for me when I decided it was time to lie down. At first, he genuinely thought he'd go back downstairs to talk to Varric, but once I'd changed and dropped onto the mattress, he eyed me, the pillows, and he deflated.

"I'm too envious," he grumbled and took off his pants before dropping down. Hawke rolled over to look at me, and I repositioned myself on the pillows. "Need an Ambien?"

"Give me the whole bottle."

Hawke rolled over for the nightstand and doled out a single pill. He chuckled at my disapproving look before I dry swallowed it.

"You're so hard," he said, meaning the pill being taken without water.

He heaved my leg over his thigh and we were quiet for a moment; him inspecting my face and me picking at the stitching in the sheets. Pig was asleep at the end of the bed.

"No one will find out," Hawke reassured me. "You think it's just you who has to handle this, but Varric, me, Anders and Isabela know what to do. Merrill, too."

"Dare I ask how you all know?"

"Do you really want to know right now?" That made me scowl through a frown, and Hawke nodded. "Didn't think so."

"I'm not sure where to go from here," I admitted. "He was my entire life for years."

"It was a part of your life, but it wasn't the whole thing," Hawke reassured me. "Think about how many hours I made you work here, the parties you went to with Isabela, the horrible camping trips Varric kept insisting we go on. Almost drowning in the sea because drunk people shouldn't be allowed near the Wounded Coast. You know, the good things."

"You insisted on those camping trips," I corrected.

"I did?  _No_." He grinned and then raised his head when Pig snored. "The point is, we've all done a lot since you came into our lives. We've had good times, bad rows and some of us even managed to fall in love. You're going to finish school, and I'm going to keep fighting. You've been trying to move forward for years, and I don't think most in your situation would."

"Talk about yourself for a minute," I said and pushed him onto his back. I hovered over him and reached for his chin to make him look up at me. "This stops. We're not going to keep doing this anymore.  _You_  need rest, and I'm so tired, Hawke."

"I know you are."

He held onto my bicep, and we stared at one another.

"I remember when I realized I was in love with you," Hawke suddenly murmured, but I didn't react. I just listened. "You were asleep on my coach, and usually you'd be gone by morning if you didn't absolutely need to tell me something that was eatin' you. But that morning, when I woke up to you still there, you drank coffee with me and didn't say anything. It was like I all at once knew you wouldn't be goin' away anytime soon, and I was bleeding piss over it. I was angry at you for being another thing. Isabela and I had ended our engagement, she'd aborted the only baby my chemo-broken balls will probably ever have, and then there you were—complicated and spiraling—asleep on my couch. I didn't want to travel this road with you."

The corners of my mouth sank.

"Don't look at me like that and let me finish," he breathed with a sad smile. "But I did, and I don't think I knew what love was like until I met you. Not the kind that keeps goin' after all the blood and shit, anyway. I want you to know I'm always going to be here for you. Doesn't matter if I'm walking beside you, three people behind or dragging ass at the end of the line, Fenris. I'll be here until you're certain I've gotta leave you be. The world doesn't mean shit if there aren't people there to help you keep turning it."

Hawke reached and pushed up the corner of my mouth until I finally smiled on my own accord. I turned my head as I bit back a laugh.

"This won't hurt forever," he promised me. "It never does."


	15. Hennessy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we just need a long, casual filler chapter at this point. The next chapter will be Christmas morning fluff, and I'll probably cry writing it because it's going to be so happy and sweet.

There has always been a double-edged sword to spending Christmas with the Hawke clan. In its simplest form, it’s enjoyable. The tree is decorated fresh, traditionally chopped down in the midst of Carver and Hawke bickering about empty patches, Leandra maintains a collection of uncorked chardonnay on the countertops, and there never ceases to be platters upon silver platters of vol-au-vent and baked brie drowning in fig preserves. On the other hand, throughout all the festooning of tinsel and avoiding mistletoe, there was the fact I’d been the nondescript ‘best friend’ for an ongoing three years. Three holiday seasons of the twins and _almost_ mother-in-law chewing on goose like cud while waiting for Hawke and me to make an announcement other than that we agreed mashed potatoes could never have enough butter. The evasion game always garnered a sense of predator and prey, and I pointedly drank myself into an eggnog oblivion in the presence of speculative glances.

“It’s really not a big deal,” Hawke said while driving my car; cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, coffee cup wedged between his thighs.

“At this point, it is.”

“If it is to you, then I guess it is.”

The windshield wipers churned through wet snow, and for the past thirty seconds, I’d been counting their rhythmic swipes. It was going to be my first white Christmas. Kirkwall only ever managed snow in January. 

“She won’t bring it up,” he continued when I didn’t say anything. “She never has.”

“Not when you’re around. Get that woman alone with me and she becomes as dry as the wine she drinks in order to excuse being mad.”

“I don’t want to know.” Hawke paused and then took a slurp from his mug. “I want to know.”

“It’s the same thing every year. She wants the reassurance that I intend to make an honest man out of her son.”

Hawke knowingly grinned. “Too late for that.”

“You were ruined long before I came around.”

“You say that, but do you _really_ know?”

I took his coffee for my own sip, but hesitated with the rim ghosting my bottom lip. “Are you, Garrett Hawke, implying I deflowered you and made you unsuitable for proper marriage? Grey Gardens is never going to get back on its feet at this rate.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that. It’s not like my mother keeps pet raccoons and thinks they’re cats. She’s not _that_ wrapped up in her fading grandeur.”

The Amell House was a testament to the final decomposition of the Gilded Age. In the late 1980s, the Amells were still teetering on social relevancy with their final threads of inheritance. That said, when Grandfather Amell kicked the bucket and Leandra was nowhere to be found aka in Ireland, Hawke’s uncle took the reins and squandered what was left in the family accounts. Because of this financial spiral, the family home in all its misplaced Rhode Island glory had deteriorated. The grand staircase was still intact, and the dining room oppressively formal, but the exterior paint had crackled and the gardens were besieged by weeds.

The twenty-roomed home was throttled by a gravel driveway that frowned outside its doors. It had the consistency of thick mud when my car trudged over its path, and the sleet had evolved into a curtain of white. Before we stepped out of the car, Bethany flung open the front doors, and as per usual, it occurred to me she had inherited the genetic goldmine of the Hawke family. Garrett Hawke was handsome, but then there was Bethany Hawke in all her Black Irish fanfare that reinstated the flexibility of my sexual attraction.

She stood there with her hands on her hips, smiling at the both of us in her red angora sweater, black tights and tall boots. Hawke and Bethany were nearly identical in terms of beauty, and I’d flirted with her over leftovers after the first Christmas we met. Hawke had promptly requested I refrain from ever doing that again. It still surprised me I’d honored his appeal.

Bethany called my name, and before bothering to greet Hawke, jogged down the steps to engulf me in a hug. Thin arms encircled my neck and she was accompanied by wafts of aniseed and puff pastry. They were in Phase One of Christmas cooking, and I was already hoping my cheese tray contribution would nix me from the line. I knew better, though. Leandra would make sure I was least her certified potato peeler on Christmas Eve. Apparently, I had impeccable knife skills.

“Favorite,” I mouthed at Hawke as he narrowed his eyes at Bethany’s prolonged hug. She hadn’t said a word to Hawke yet.

“You’ve been around too long,” Hawke muttered and grabbed my bag for me, swinging it over his broad shoulder. I freed Bethany to take it, but he shifted away from me. “Go back to being loved by my family more than I am. Might as well let me breathe in the vapors.”

“Pouty,” Bethany said and then pressed her cheek to mine while looking at Hawke. “I missed you, big brother.”

“Liar,” he said, but there was a good natured twist to his mouth. “Where’s Carver?”

“Contemplating an axe outback.”

I pursed my lips and couldn’t tell if she’d meant that to sound sinister or not. Hawke and I exchanged a wary look.

“He wants to cut down the tree,” Bethany explained. “He almost went without you.”

“We would’ve lost him to the elements,” Hawke said with a grunt and carted all of our baggage inside. I freed myself from Bethany and reached into the backseat for the cheese.

“You might as well say hello to your mother before we get the tree,” I said and realized there was a gun on the backseat floorboard. I grunted and pushed it farther beneath the seat.

Bethany opened the door for us and we were greeted by the grand entrance's Imperial staircase. Apparently, Leandra had splurged. The chandelier was impeccably clean and its newly changed light bulbs caused a jarring glow. Hawke dropped the bags at the end of the marble stairs and kissed me square on the mouth. He then made a beeline for the kitchen where his mother was hiding with a wine glass. I let him go ahead of me so that he could hug her and give her his own private lowdown on his life.

“He kissed you,” Bethany announced.

“So _that’s_ what those are called.”

“Don’t be a tart,” she said and approached my side. Her arm returned to my shoulders and we listened to the murmuring from the kitchen down the hall. Soon there was Leandra’s charmed laughter, and Hawke was working his ‘favorite child’ magic. “Mother is going to trip all over herself if Garrett tells her. She sincerely thought you two were _done_.”

“I’m sure she hoped, but we’re working on it.” I changed the subject. “Are you coming with us on our tree hunt?”

“No,” Bethany said without hesitation. “Not after last year.”

“I see I’m the sole referee for Cain and Abel then.”

“You’ll have fun.” She barely managed that with a straight face. “Is Anders coming this year? I know Mother sent him an invitation, but he didn’t reply the way he usually does.”

I shrugged and started walking toward the kitchen. “I’m not his keeper.”

It wasn’t so much that I had an opinion about tagging along to pick out the tree. It was more that there was something immoral about letting the brothers enter the woods with an axe – _alone_. From the moment Leandra pushed Carver free, there’d been an unpleasantness between the two that could only be simmered down to alpha male inclination. One of the first stories I heard about the brothers was how four-year-old Hawke dragged a trashcan to Carver’s cradle and deposited sheets of used tissue paper across his head. Fortunately, Malcolm found Hawke and informed him that suffocation was a life or death phenomenon. Of course, that didn’t stop Hawke from eventually using his influence to practically choke his younger sibling.

As said, Carver was outback with the axe.

“Carver,” I said in greeting, and he glanced up from his sharpening with a fleeting nod of acknowledgement.

“Fenris,” he said. “You look human.”

“I decided to put on the skin suit this morning. I didn’t want to scare your mother.”

“Too late for that.”

We almost smiled at one another. I coughed back my laugh and tugged my beanie over my ears before sitting down beside him on a tarp-covered pile of firewood.

“How has life been?” I asked and kneaded my gloved hands. The cold always made me miserable. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since last Christmas.”

“I don’t think exes tend to stay in touch with the family or so I’ve heard.”

“Fair enough.” I glanced over at him. “Still butchering?”

“I am, but I’m starting my MA next fall.”

I saw that he was evidently pleased with himself, so I lightened up.

“That…” I thought for a moment. “Congratulations. That’s a big deal.”

“I heard you dropped out.”

My shoulders immediately sank. Carver’s conversational skills left much to be desired. “I did, but I’ve reenrolled.”

“Good for you,” he said awkwardly and we sat there in silence. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” I lied. I decided it probably wasn’t wise to mention the fact I was technically a murderer and that it’d direly impacted my emotional stability. “Better than usual.”

My standards needed negotiating.  

Hawke appeared minutes later with Leandra standing behind him. I’d evaded them for the backyard mainly because I feared his mother’s judgment. Not that I didn’t deserve her ridicule. I’d pulled her son through the mud by his hair and roundhouse kicked him to hell and back like a game of pong. After what I’d done, it was difficult to convince even myself I’d honestly loved Hawke through the worst of it. Negotiating how Hawke was my everything and then an intangible void was something even I was working on.

“There you are,” Leandra said to me with a trained smile. “You look good, Fenris. It’s been so long since I last saw you I almost can’t believe it.”

This was code for: You don’t look like the junkie my son first brought home, also known as, you’ve got fat on your ass, Fenris.

“Pediasure does wonders,” I joked a little too flatly and realized what I’d done. Hawke licked his upper-lip to keep from snorting. “Thank you, Leandra. We’re going to get the tree, but after, I can help you.”

“My favorite potato peeler,” she said and then rubbed her arms. “Keep your phones on you and come back if it gets too cold.”

We let Carver hold the axe as we wandered into the blackened woods that crept high behind the house. The nearby pine forest was convenient, but there was the issue of the trees being too big or diseased beyond use. This was always the bone of contention between the brothers, and it was up to me to passively comment in order to steer the path straight. Typically, I was forced to let them get a couple digs in. Otherwise, one or the other would combust from the sheer need to be an asshole.

"Carver, quit walking so slow.”

“Stop lumbering like a handicapped bear.”

 I stepped in deep sludge with a literal ‘ _ugh_.’

“I got you,” Hawke said before I could protest.

As if pulling me from the waves, he pointedly picked me up by the underneath of my armpits and tugged my boot free. Carver wouldn’t look at us whenever Hawke was even remotely affectionate toward me, and it didn’t take a genius to guess why. Hawke was a conventionally attractive, biological man teeming with muscles, symmetrical features and heart rendering charisma. He emitted the ‘I want to be you’ vibrations that could change the pacing of someone’s self-perception for years.

“He’s frustrated I’m a queer,” Hawke once explained. We were lying in bed after announcing we were together. Carver had seized up on spot. “He loves women, and since you’re a man and not easy for him to understand, he gets miffed at me for wasting what part of me he wishes he was. Doesn’t like to know I slobber the knob or whatever. Makes him uncomfortable. Don’t take it personal when he won’t look you in the eye. It’s not you. It’s on me.”

There wasn’t much I could do about it, and because it was so passive, I tended to pick my battles with Carver. He was riddled with problems, but so was I. I didn’t have the capacity to tear him apart unless I found it absolutely necessary.

“I like that one,” Hawke said.

That One looked like every other tree.

“It’s too thin,” Carver said dismissively. “A bit wimpy ‘round the bottom.”

“Then what about that one?”

"It’s bulbous.”

“A tree can’t be fuckin’ bulbous.”

The mounting aggravation was racing toward the finish line, and I regretted forgetting my cigarettes in the car. The clipped exchange of disagreement went back and forth for several minutes. At one point, I was almost certain Carver was manifesting issues with the trees to piss himself off. Usually, I found them entertaining, but I was losing feeling in my nose.

“This one,” I said and held onto its branch. I hadn’t even looked at it. “I like this one.”

“It’s perfect,” Carver said without looking at it either.

Hawke’s stare darted toward the axe in Carver’s hands. “Let me cut it down or we’ll be here all night.”

“Don’t criticize the man with the axe,” I grumbled, having forgot this was the second stage to cutting down the tree. “Hawke, let him cut it down.”

“He’s been doing plenty of cutting since we stepped outside. Hand it over, Carver.”

I hated them both.

Carver and Hawke flipped a coin to see who got to cut down the tree. After losing the first coin in the snow, a rare glimmer of luck shimmered on Carver and Carver’s call for heads allowed him to swing. Much to my surprise, it took him less than fifteen minutes. It fell onto its side with slow drop, and the sun was only beginning to set as the three of us packed up the tree.

“That went better than last year,” I noted with a wry smile.

“Don’t talk about last year,” Hawke grumbled.

Bethany was waiting for us in the living room with the ornament boxes. I jogged toward the fire before taking off my jacket. Plopping down on the floor, I shoved my socked toes daringly close to the flames and ignored Bethany’s laugh. Hawke reached down and ruffled my hat hair into place and tossed a blanket over my shoulders, but he didn’t sit down beside me.

“Wine will warm you up,” Bethany said and left to grab me a glass.

“You going to survive?” Hawke asked and dragged his thumb along the mantle. His eyes were on the family portrait. He was looking at Malcolm. “Maybe you should eat something.”

"I’m fine.” My teeth chattered. “You look like him.”

Hawke paused and furrowed his brow. “Who?”

“Malcolm.”

"Don't flatter me." But it made Hawke softly smile.

Being able to do that was my favorite thing. I promised myself to get better at it.

Eventually, Bethany returned with the whole decanter.

I had a sudden longing for Hawke to sit beside me, but he wouldn’t dare in front of his family without proper announcement. I settled on the wine.

Technically, it was three days before Christmas, but everyday was made to be a miniature feast. The first night was usually low-key. Either we’d order out or cook something small while Leandra made an aggressive amount of cookies and pastries. Between bottles of wine and Hawke’s bottled beer, the five of us could sit around the kitchen island for hours, bantering back and forth about Hawke’s business ventures, Carver’s schooling and Bethany’s expanding flower shop in the nearby village. She’d dropped out of community college in the image of her older brother.

“He’s doing well,” I reassured Leandra when she side-eyed Hawke’s boxing. “It’s what he wants to do. There are health benefits.”

The table grew quiet.

Hawke’s siblings glanced at Hawke before looking back at me, but Leandra incredulously inspected my face. The information set her off, and as Hawke tended to do, she narrowed her eyes.

“He told me,” I said dismissively. “You should go to one of his matches.”

Leandra kept observing me, and I pretended not to notice. Hawke shrugged at her with a bit of a smile and cleared his throat to grab her attention.

I’d said something, but I didn’t know what.

We exhausted that night’s wine supply before we wobbly climbed the stairs for bed. Hawke and I slept in his bedroom. It’d actively updated throughout a majority of his life in the states, so it felt more like a master suite than an adolescent’s shame cave.

I collapsed onto the bed only to hum and Hawke tugged off one of my thick socks.

“Showing some skin,” he teased and then rolled me over onto my back.

Hawke was swinging the sock around and tossed it over his shoulder before reaching for the other. Then sockless, I waited for Hawke to tug on his joggers.

“I’m too wine to wash my face,” I admitted and watched him strip.

“I’m really the last one to judge you for it. We’ve camped together.”

He grabbed a sweatshirt and collapsed onto the bed beside me.

The rickety four-poster bed was an heirloom with tattered red curtains that closed to block out light. Three years later and the novelty still hadn’t worn off, which was why—as Hawke gracelessly pushed back the blankets without leaving the mattress—I started to close them. Hawke chuckled at me as I struggled, but I was resilient.

“It’s winter. It’ll be dark until noon tomorrow.”

I ignored him, and once every curtain was closed, settled beside him. “I prefer them shut.”

Hawke and I laid there in still silence as the drunkenness swooned us. I kept my eyes on the canopy ceiling and appreciated the distinct sound of Hawke scratching his beard.

“Wanna make out?” he finally asked.

“In your mother’s house?” I rolled over onto my side to face him.

His chuckle in the black hovel made me smile. I scooted closer to him.

“We could,” I added.

“If you want to.”

I reached and carded a set of fingers through his warm, messy hair, and Hawke melted, evidently desperate for the affection I tended to refuse him on the day-to-day. That shameless reaction incited me to brush my nose along his forehead, and I dragged my cheek down the side of his head. There I appreciated the prickles from his beard; the way he kissed my shoulder even though it was layered with thick fabric; how he swept a piece of stray hair behind my ear and muttered something inaudible that sounded suspiciously like ‘beautiful.’ Without precedence, he delicately clasped onto my wrist and bridged the gap between us with a single shift forward, but he paused in his own thought. Hawke’s mouth hovered near mine, fanning out warm breath that held hints of Guinness, and I urged him onward with an airy muttering of his name.

Noncommittally, I clenched the fist he held, and Hawke freed the appendage with a drag down my forearm. His fingers slid upward, across my palm, and I spread my hand open. Hawke understood the invitation and laced our digits. I hummed. The haze was enticing, and I could’ve comfortably stayed there for the night, but Hawke was guiding.

He kissed me first. Lips locked, Hawke opened his mouth just enough so that the tip of his tongue could lave along mine in slight curves. I rubbed back, and in my softly drunken state, concentrated on the way our breath mingled out of time. His hand took my hip with digging fingers, and he suddenly pushed upward to caress my my torso, play my ribs like a harp. One after another, our breathing hitched in the midst of the kiss, and I panted both to steady myself and drink in the lingering scent of his cologne. Rugged and radiating heat in front of me, the way he kissed with every unspoken word had me pulsating nostalgia.

This had once been everyday for us. There was a time when this was how he kissed me goodnight.

I kissed him back and comfortably loved him with my hands creeping down the lattice of his spine and ribs, and there was a safety in him I knew I would never find with another person.

* * *

 

The next morning, we made breakfast together while his family slept. It was still snowing as we dipped pieces of Texas toast in egg and cinnamon. We sipped our coffee and quietly discussed where we wanted to be in ten years; what we saw ourselves doing. Sometimes we included the other in passing, but there was no throttling dedication or false idealization.

“After I do my time as a teacher, I think I’ll make peace with my destiny; ultimate submersion in a place with medieval archives.”

Hawke coughed through his laughter. “Fenris enters the catacombs. We never see him again. Some even believe he kicked the bucket, but I get a letter once a year that lets me know how his rat diet is going. He misses my touch, but he says he manages by rubbing against the dead.”

“Accurate.”

“Would you really miss my touch?” he asked, pleased with the idea.

I tossed two slices of sopping wet toast onto the griddle. “Especially the four finger one.”

“Kinky.”

He laughed and that low laughter managed to dig a chuckle out of me. Hawke stepped in front of me, and I raised my egg-coated fingers in surrender when he wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed me. Knowing I wouldn’t grab him with the mess on my hands, he walked me back against the counter and assertively caught my chin to guide me into a kiss that caught me off guard. How I felt about it didn’t have time to register because there was a feminine cough to interrupt us.

“Mother!” Hawke said and drifted away.           

 

_Death could scarce be bitterer._

Dante Alighieri

 

Leandra wouldn’t look at me. I’d defiled her son, her heir. Hawke’s face looked like he’d shoved it into boiling water, and he rubbed his warm complexion before going to get his mother a ‘forgive me’ cup of coffee. I parted my lips and said nothing but went to flip the French toast.

“I see you two are…” Leandra didn’t know how to word it. “In the throes.”

“Mother, that’s a terrible way of putting it,” Hawke said, voice crackling.

“But a way of putting it,” I said softly and then cleared my throat. “Good morning, Le – ”

“Is it going to last this time?”

Neither of us said anything.

Leandra was an unnerving woman in the way she was with Hawke. Warm and delightful to everyone except him and me, I’d become a regular audience to the cutting things she’d say to her son. Against better judgment, I’d once felt the need to comment on it over tea and butter cookies, and in turn, instated myself as the pariah. There was something sick about the way she could coif her greying hair, fix her dying beauty, to incite the illusion of maternal wholesomeness. At one point, I’d been invited to the family bi-weekly dinners, but the idea of her presence had made me so uncomfortable I’d started to pregame with a bottle of wine in order to cope.

“I don’t think it’s a good time to talk about it,” Hawke quietly said. It was amazing how his accent and lexicon altered around her.

Leandra darted her gaze to me, and I tossed another piece of bread on the griddle. I could feel her cutting my throat with her stare.

“Thank you for making breakfast, Fenris.”

She tugged open the fridge to find the fruit salad she’d made the night before.

Hawke and I avoided one another for the rest of the day. In fact, when we went to bed that evening, just as drunk as we were the night before, I couldn’t help but notice how he avoided the center of the bed. Leandra had dug under his skin, and there was nothing I could do about it. If we’d gone home, then I would’ve spent the night cooing at him, telling him not to worry, but Leandra’s room was two doors down the hallway, and he was self-conscious.

“She’s not going to do anything,” I whispered into the pillow and crept my fingers toward him. Hawke ignored my hand and kept his back turned toward me. “Hawke…”

“It’s nothing you want your mother to see.”

“You don’t know what she saw,” I reminded him. “She’s a grown woman. She has kids.”

Hawke turned over and leaned over to kiss the tip of my head. I inclined my head for more, but he deliberately avoided my mouth. Instead, he kissed my forehead.

“Hawke,” I tried once more, but he brought back his face.

“Not tonight, Fenris.”

Hawke rolled over onto his side and tugged his blanket over his shoulder.

* * *

 

Christmas Eve morning landed me at the kitchen island, peeling potatoes. I stood there with an absent look and a coffee mug at wrist-level, thinking about if Hawke had even wanted to begin claiming me as his partner again. He would’ve devoured me if I flirted with someone in front of him, but then again, he had no space to tell me ‘no.’ We were comfortable in our current sphere, but eventually, someday soon, its rickety framework would need reassessing. Did the label matter if I was happy? I couldn’t find the sense in titles that smelled like mortgage, children and forever. I couldn’t even pay my own rent half the time.

“Are you clean?”

Leandra appeared beside me with the cutting board so that she could loosely dice the potatoes. She was taking advantage of the fact Hawke and Carver were in town with Bethany chaperoning their hunt for ‘the nice paper plates.’

“Define _clean_ ,” I said coolly.

“When was the last time you were on whatever you were taking?” she asked, and her voice was calm, collected, but she was serious. This mattered to her.

"It hasn’t been long,” I said, the admittance heavy between us.

“I’ve seen my son cry three times in his life.” Her knife chops were pointed and loud. “When his father died, when he told me Isabela aborted their baby, and when you fell off the wagon and left him. Now that you know he’s been sick, I can tell you that I’ve always resented you for complicating an already complicated time in his life. You’re young. You’re selfish, and you’re everything a mother doesn’t want to see her grown child fall in love with. You’ve never considered his safety because you’re not old enough to consider anyone else’s but your own. I know who took care of you before him, and I can see why my son seemed like such a good idea at the time.”

There was nothing I could say. She wasn’t done.

“If you’re intending to stay with him past this point, then you should stop thinking about how in love with him you are and genuinely think about him as a man.”

My lips parted to say something, but they shut again as she scraped the potatoes off the cutting board and gestured for me to keep peeling.

“I’m getting it together.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said without feeling. “But if you don’t graduate, and if you don’t get a job and life outside of him, then I will make your life hell from the moment you marry him on until you two get a divorce, Fenris. You don’t get to define his life by yours when he’s already almost lost his twice.”

We finally looked at one another.

“You think we’re going to get married.”

“You two will, and I’d really like to be happy the day it happens.”

We were silently chopping carrots when Hawke and his siblings came clamoring into the kitchen. Bethany was riding piggyback on Hawke.

“Mother,” Hawke said triumphantly and out of breath. Bethany was laughing as Hawke pretended to drop her. “We found your fancy paper plates.”

“What time are the people showing up?” Carver asked, dread on his lips. He took a cookie from my plate and familiarly dipped it in my cold coffee.

“Eight, dear,” Leandra said calmly, knowing Carver hated a full house.

Leandra had turned on Christmas carols and handed me a plate full of cookies as a peace offering after our confrontation, and I’d chewed through six of them in under an hour. I grabbed the final scone and dryly bit into it like a heathen. Hawke watched me and dropped Bethany onto her feet. He reached for a corner of my scone, and I tried to duck away but Bethany stole one from my plate, so I gave up. Food didn’t last long in a room full of Hawkes.

Hawke hummed along to the Christmas carol and he tugged open the fridge for milk.

“I’m not shaving,” Hawke announced.

“No one said you had to,” Carver said, as if annoyed.

“Mother did,” he countered and Leandra sighed.

“Wear a nice sweater then.” There was the faintest hint of begging. “I’ve bought you so many nice sweaters, Garrett. Black slacks, too.”

“Even _I’d_ like to see that,” I said beneath my breath.

Hawke looked up at me, and it was then I knew he’d wear the sweater and slacks.

Leandra visibly tightened her jaw. 

The Christmas Eve party wasn’t a high stakes get together. At the most, there was a table of food, blaring Christmas carols featuring Garrett Hawke and a wine display that got me hot. It involved all of Hawke’s friends, including Varric and Isabela, and then Amell associates who still found the mansion an important historical landmark they hoped to see restored to its former glory. The party predictably encircled the Hawke siblings. They were good looking and their accents were enchanting to the American ear. It was no wonder Leandra practically begged Hawke to look like a person. That said, if there was one thing I didn’t mind doing, then it was looking like a person. In fact, growing up in the limelight had left a competitive stain on me that required me to look better than everyone else at all times.

“I haven’t wrapped presents,” Hawke confessed as he brushed product through his hair in his en suite. He’d put on the Ralph Lauren slacks and red Christmas sweater. Twice I felt him up, and his low chuckle told me he liked it. “I wrapped yours out of necessity, but that’s it.”

“Same, though,” I said, unaffected as I knelt down to shove my foot into a black riding boot. Hawke watched me zip it up. “We’ll do that after the party.”

“Drunk wrapping party.”

Guests were noshing on cheese when we descended the stairs, and from the wine table, Varric greeted Hawke with a raised fist. Hawke returned the 1980s film reference, and I looked away as if we weren’t friends. My focus dwelled on the tinsel and trimmings intertwined with soft white Christmas lights. The chatter of old friends and clinking of glasses finally put me in the holiday spirit. My Christmases with Danarius had always been blackouts, and I’d never understood how comfortable someone could be during the holidays, even with a mother who hated you.

“What an expensive duo,” Varric noted. “Nice V-neck, Fenris.”

It was a black Dolce & Gabbana sweater I’d had for two years. That, my riding boots and pair of black pants with a white floral print made me _look_ like someone Leandra could stand. From the corner of my eye, I could see her perched by the hors d'oeuvres and leering. We were drinking and there were a lot of people wandering. She expected me to snort a line off the banister.

“You’re one to talk,” I said and scrutinized his turtleneck.

“Keeping it classy,” Varric said and shrugged.

“I’m surprised you’re not with your family,” Hawke said and poured us two glasses of wine. “You couldn’t even make it for a minute last year.”

Varric groaned at the word ‘family,’ and I thought about his scam artist brother.

“I might’ve killed my nieces and nephews this year, so I decided to take my holiday cheer elsewhere,” he said.

“There aren’t any tikes for you to throttle, unfortunately.”

Hawke chuckled and I took my wine from him. Varric squinted at us and his nose wrinkled in disgust as he looked away.

“You two look like you own a timeshare.”

We exchanged a quick look and stepped away from one another.

“I’m ready for this shitty weather to be over,” I said as I stared out one of the grand windows in the ballroom. The snow was coming down in sheets.

“We could take my bike out when it warms up,” Hawke suggested. “My dad’s I mean.”

“The same one we found pictures of your mom posed on…”

“No,” he said, too quickly.

“Yes.”

“Stop.”

I parted my lips and smiled. “You were made on that motorcycle.”

“Fenris, you haven’t even finished a glass yet.”

“Would you like to continue the cycle of life?”

“I’m leaving you here with Mother, forever."

I took the threat serious. “You brought your guitar, didn’t you?”

Varric gestured for Isabela who strode up to us in heels that dwarfed me. She pressed her hip to Hawke and then glanced at the people wandering by with champagne in hand.

“I’m feeling provincial among this crowd. Who wants to get baked upstairs?” she asked and when everyone lifted their glasses, we darted toward the stairs.

“Where’s everyone going?” Leandra called.

We stopped and looked over our shoulders.

“Upstairs,” Hawke said, sounding like a fifteen-year-old caught red-handed.

“Garrett Malcolm—”

I laughed beneath my breath and Isabela pushed at my shoulder, but she laughed too. We righted ourselves and there was a sudden knock at the door.

“Let me get it,” I said since I was the closest to the door. Not to mention, I wanted to give Hawke a moment to deal with his mother. Odds were, she was going to ask if I was luring him upstairs with a fix. If only she knew just how good her son was.

I opened the door with a neutral expression that dropped to the porch as soon as I saw who was standing on the other side. The gust of icy air couldn’t have been more appropriate.

It was Anders. He was wearing sunglasses, even though it was eleven at night, and leaned against the rotting pillar out front. I opened my mouth to point out how he looked like an asshole, but then I glanced at his feet. There was a bag of wrapped gifts, and beneath his arm was an expensive bottle of Hennessey. I recalled Leandra had invited him over for Christmas since he had no family, and honestly, had been around for Christmas longer than me, but I’d thought we were in the clear this year. Anders suddenly cleared his throat, raising an eyebrow.

“Merry Christmas,” I said, without much emotion.

“Merry Christmas,” he said back, and I let him in.


End file.
